Prince’s Trust launches ‘industry first’ fake Linkedin page to highlight abuse

Prince’s Trust has launched the ‘Learn The Hard Way’ campaign today with a fake profile on Linkedin that sees fictional homeless girl Lois Amanda-Clarke approaching employers for online endorsements in a bid to illustrate the issues young people from troubled backgrounds face when looking for a new job.

The Linkedin campaign debuts alongside a 60 second online video advert that documents the hardships facing several young people trying to secure long-term employment. It features a script that reiterates the key job skills picked up from unconventional means such as homelessness and abuse.

Employers that engage with the ‘homeless’ girl’s Linkedin profile will then be transferred directly to the video ad.

“We wanted to show how much young people from troubled backgrounds have to offer and challenge businesses to think twice about how they view these types of candidates,” says Jonathan Burley, executive creative director at CHI&Partners, who’ve overseen the national campaign.

The charity’s communications director Paul Brown said ‘Learn The Hard Way’ is the ‘first time’ the Prince’s Trust has worked alongside Linkedin on an interactive creative.

“We will be trialling this charity industry-first approach and if it is successful we will continue to step up our work with Linkedin on future campaigns,” he told Marketing Week.

“The charity market is more competitive than ever before so we’re hoping that thinking outside the box on things like this will give our campaigns a real edge and allow us to collaborate more effectively with big businesses to help young people in the UK.”

The Prince’s Trust says the campaign was inspired by recent research that showed almost a million young people in the UK would describe their childhoods as “traumatic”.

The online campaign will be followed in early February with ads that will span prime time television, cinema, radio and print and social media.

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