FCB London

Brand: The Big Issue

Year: 2021

During the pandemic, The Big Issue went from selling 80,000 magazines a week to zero. Needless to say, they were facing a fight for survival. To help vendors find customers online as they could no longer see them on the high street, we and The Big Issue turned to one of the fastest-growing professional platforms in the world — LinkedIn.

Using location data to find the businesspeople who worked in the area where the vendors used to sell and recreating these neighborhoods digitally, we trained vendors on the platform to help them reconnect with old customers who used to walk by them every day. With personalized ecommerce triggers to help vendors make sales at any point of the conversation, we helped The Big Issue realize a +325% increase in digital subscriptions, +400% uplift in sales; and achieve over 112M impressions.

Not only did we help shift the way The Big Issue does business, but we helped vendors upskill in the process, changing perceptions about what vendors could accomplish.