Homeless Fonts

When you walk by a homeless person on the sidewalk holding a cardboard sign, you see an anonymous face struggling to survive. So to help the homeless in Barcelona, Cyranos McCann teamed up with the Arrels Foundation to launch HomelessFonts.org. The website featured fonts created using the handwriting of local homeless people, ready for purchase by marketers aiming to personalize their brands.

The money raised from the website is to be spent on accommodation, food, social programs and health care of the homeless. For more information visit www.HomelessFonts.org.

The Donor Cable

Azerbaijan has the world’s highest number of children born with the blood disorder thalassemia, a hereditary disease primarily found among Mediterranean cultures. The illness requires extensive blood transfusions for babies, and hospitals often lack the needed amount of donated blood.

So Y&R Moscow partnered with Azerbaijan cellular network Nar Mobile to re-imagine blood donations for today’s digital world. Together they created a special wearable bracelet that let smartphone owners easily donate power to another.

The unique “donor cables” were an instant hit and the country saw an increase in blood donation by 335%.

Hellmann’s: Recitweet

In the past, Hellmann’s has used novel ways to encourage consumers to use their mayonnaise for more than just sandwiches. Now, for their latest campaign, they team up with Ogilvy Brazil to create Recitweet.

The use case is instantly familiar. You open the fridge, you see ingredients, and you still do not know what to cook. With Recitweet, consumers tweet their ingredients with the hashtag #PreparaPraMim (“prepare for me” in Portuguese). Hellmann’s replies with a recipe that is designed to use those exact ingredients.

A recipe engine built on a social reply

The mechanism is ingredient matching through a public tweet. The input is a short list of what you have at home. The output is a tailored recipe suggestion delivered back as a tweet reply, so the brand behaves like a lightweight cooking helper rather than a broadcaster.

In FMCG food brands, this utility-led social pattern turns content into a small service that appears at the exact moment the consumer is stuck.

Why it lands

It respects the consumer’s real problem. “I have food, I lack an idea.” The campaign does not start with a product claim. It starts with a decision obstacle, then uses the brand to remove it. That makes the engagement feel earned, because the interaction produces something usable in the next 30 minutes.

Extractable takeaway: If your product is an ingredient, win by solving the “what do I do with what I already have” question. Make the brand the shortest path from inventory to action, using the channel where the consumer already asks for help.

What to steal for your own social utility

  • Constrain the input. A short list of ingredients forces clarity and makes the interaction easy to start.
  • Return a specific next step. A recipe beats a generic tip, because it includes implied quantities, sequence, and outcome.
  • Make the service feel personal, at scale. The reply is the moment of value. Treat it like customer service, not advertising copy.
  • Design for repeat behavior. The best activations are not one-off stunts. They create a habit loop people can use again the next time the fridge looks random.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Recitweet in one sentence?

Recitweet is a Twitter-based recipe helper that takes a list of tweeted ingredients and replies with a recipe designed to use them.

Why use a hashtag like #PreparaPraMim?

It standardizes the request so the brand can find, process, and respond to it consistently, while keeping participation friction low.

What makes this more effective than posting recipes on a website?

It is contextual and initiated by the consumer. The recipe arrives when the person is actively deciding what to cook, using what they say they have.

What is the biggest operational risk?

Response quality and response time. If replies are slow, irrelevant, or repetitive, the “service” framing collapses and it starts to feel like a gimmick.