Your HOA is waiting for you

HOA
  • Communication

2015 has brought us a palette of dramatic events, among them was a significant growth of utility rates. It should become most sensible at the beginning of the heating season this autumn. So in October 2014, the government launched a program for indemnifying a portion of loans for heat insulation. In June 2015, the list of equipment and materials covered by the credit program was greatly expanded.

Challenge

The program generated lots of buzz from the very beginning. As of the end of September 2015, Oshchadbank granted over 0.5 UAH billion in personal loans for the insulation of apartments and private houses, buying of non-gas boilers, etc. But an overall insulation improvement of blocks of flats was still an unpopular procedure, though 40% of the principal of the amount borrowed would be repaid by the government. In fact, just 21 Home-Owners’ Associations (HOA) out of 17,000 received heat insulation credits. Our task was to spread the word about the necessity and economic practicability of performing a complex insulation for apartment buildings. The idea was to create a vibrant social appetizer preceding a long-term promotion campaign for the development of energy efficiency and energy independence in Ukraine.

Solution

We realized that delivering a message on the necessity of complex insulation was a serious and socially useful event for a grassroots social advertising campaign. It was supposed to have a great impact against oncoming election campaign in media. Besides, everyone got used to a social advertisement as to something gloomy, tragic and grey, or the other way around — as to something that exploited patriotic feelings and images. Considering the benchmarks, our idea of communication was nearly seditious. We dressed an HOA chief as a master of ceremonies and shot a real social rap inside a Kyiv multi-storied building. The bright 30-second MTV-styled music video featured a stylish bearded man, a glam housewife in a pink fur coat with a barking little dog. Dancing and singing, they expressed a clear idea that it would be hotter and cheaper in apartments if approaching the issue together. If you hate paying much but all the same freezing cold, get yourself off the couch, go to your local HOA or other public utilities service provider with your neighbors and demand real actions. Our rap is unlikely to show up in music charts, but even so Your HOA is Waiting for You is downloaded by many online users. And this is the step to insulation.