United Way's Holiday Ad Tells a Homelessness Story from a Ring Doorbell's Perspective

This year’s holiday campaign from United Way Halifax is remarkable for a number of reasons—it’s shot entirely on a Ring doorbell camera, its stars are volunteers instead of actors and it’s been at least a year in the making. But its twist ending is what leaves the most indelible impression, coloring everything that comes before it. And that’s the whole point. The scenario of the 60-second spot is a familiar one, captured from the vantage point of a Ring doorbell as a family preps for the holidays. They lug a giant Christmas tree up the front steps. The kids make a snowman in the yard. Folks come to visit. Packages arrive via delivery trucks. UNICEF Holiday Campaign Showcases How Kindness Positively Impacts Children It’s everyday stuff, touching in its own subtle way, giving viewers a fly-on-the-wall peek into a routine that many people may take for granted. But the final frames introduce a different reality: a homeless person, bundled against the cold, pushes a shopping cart along the sidewalk. The tagline reads: “Not everyone has a home for the holidays.” Lo-fi production, high-priority issue The short film, from independent Canadian agency Wunder, aims to drum up donations to United Way by highlighting the growing homelessness problem in Halifax and its surrounding areas. The unhoused population there has doubled in the last year and shows no signs of slowing, while rising inflation and rents mean that thousands of people are a few missed payments away from being on the streets, according to Stephen Flynn, the shop's creative director. United Way Halifax funds programs that alleviate poverty, with nearly half its efforts devoted to meeting the need for safe and secure housing. The nonprofit will be competing with countless others for consumer dollars, potentially made more scarce this year by the recession. “We really wanted this piece to represent the things that happen around our home during the holiday season, as most of these seemingly simple things really do provide a lot of perspective when compared to someone not having a home,” Flynn told Adweek. In the PSA, when guests arrive, they only have to wait in the frigid weather for a few minutes; they don’t battle it 24-7. Deliveries get dropped off and decorations put up, suggesting at least some disposable income. Grandma comes for a visit, meaning there’s a strong intergenerational family bond and an extra bed for her. The kids aren’t hungry, so they don’t need to eat that carrot—they can use it for a snowman’s nose. For Wunder, the groundwork began a year in advance, lining up a cast of characters and a donated location, testing various video doorbells and waiting for the right picturesque snowy conditions. The central idea, initially pitched in late 2021, was fully intertwined with the method of creating the ad. “We were pretty excited when we had the simple realization that with modern technology, we could actually tell the story of homelessness from the perspective of a house,” Flynn said. It wasn’t a downside, but rather a benefit, that there’s a proliferation of content from home-based security systems on news programs, TV shows, commercials and social platforms. “The popularity of these video doorbells and the footage itself gets a ton of engagement on social,” Flynn said. “People are generally drawn to those videos because they give you a peek into someone else’s home life and feel as though you might see something interesting, making it hard to look away.” https://vimeo.com/762346591 Ring, which got an assist from a GoPro mounted above the doorbell, was chosen because of its “great lens and horizontal frame,” and its simple interface for reviewing and downloading video, Flynn said. Neither brand has an official link to the campaign. The shooting tactic turned out to be “creatively liberating,” Flynn said. “There are typically a lot of moving parts on a shoot like this, mainly as a result of all of the gear, lights, cameras required to bring it to life. So being able to have a single fixed camera and not even the worry about things like focus allowed us to really narrow in on the details of making these slice of life moments happen at the home.” The agency is planning a month-long media buy on traditional TV in December, along with distribution for “The Doorbell” on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube starting today.