Dulux 'Paint for change'

Background

Dulux recognised that in the current economic climate that they had to initiate a completely new strategy to motivate the British public to pick up a paintbrush and get them painting with Dulux. 

 

The Big Idea – Paint For Change
We knew that rallying people to paint their living rooms wasn’t enough and so we created a national campaign in The Sun and The Sun Online to motivate communities to make over local projects.  The economic decline shifted focus from “global” to “local” and made community even more important to all of us. 

 

The Sun is the only newspaper campaigning to Fix Broken Britain and Back British Business, putting us in the unique position to deliver the concept Paint for Change.  We split the country up into 11 geographical regions, each with a community project badly in need of attention, readers then voted for what they thought was the most deserving of a makeover, through online voting. 

 

Making It Happen
A big four-page unveiling in-paper launched Paint For Change, showcased the campaign and the community projects up for nomination.  Readers were directed online to vote for what they thought was the most deserving project to be made over by our team of experts, along with community volunteers.   

 

Once the first wave of voting was completed, we reported back to our readers with a DPS of how the projects went and showcased the new projects available to vote for, forming a launch pad for the new wave of voting.

 

Making it tangible – The Dulux/ Sun Paint For Change Bus!
To add even more fun and PR value to the campaign, we specially commissioned a bus for Paint For Change, which visits all winning project sites. Complete with expert tradesmen and fantastic tools with equipment, the bus became the focal point on tour and an iconic emblem of the campaign. 

 

Intrigued local communities poured out to help and in return were given practical advice to put into practice in their own homes.  We even had celebrity help on a couple of projects, including Jimmy Saville.

 

Results – Change Happened
As at June 2009: In a two month period for the first wave, we received almost 22,000 votes online with over 100,000 unique visitors the microsite.  These people also provided 63 new nominations for projects to be made over.