How an Awareness Campaign Helped Address a Community Crisis

The Challenge

Since January 2020, homelessness in San Diego had increased by 10 percent, with most recent counts identifying more than 12,000 people experiencing homelessness locally. The need was greater than ever… but so was the public’s compassion fatigue.

The Solution

The San Diego Rescue Mission launched the Every Heart capital campaign to expand local services. BDI created a multi-channel awareness campaign using a rallying call to action, “Don’t let despair win,” to reinvigorate community support and hope.

The Results

AI Images Helped Communicate the Need

A key innovation of the awareness campaign was using AI imagery to illustrate the challenges women and children face on the streets. It clearly presented the need and showed situations of crisis, while still protecting the privacy of this vulnerable population.

Boosting Awareness & Revenue

The AI-generated imagery of women outperformed images of men in Facebook campaigns. This was surprising as traditional photography of men in need typically performs better than photos of women.
This demonstrates an increasing sensitivity to the plight of homeless women and women with children – a key population the Rescue Mission serves. It also shows the power of AI imagery to move donors to respond to a need that may otherwise be difficult to capture with traditional photography.