18 months ago, Daintree Paper was forced to close down due to the owner at the time’s anti-gay stance. He refused to stock products that supported same sex marriage, leading to overwhelming public outcry. The business was sold, and the new owners wanted to communicate their support for the Marriage Equality referendum.
This is how we helped this little paper shop restore their reputation and become a global phenomenon – by simply recycling homophobic flyers into confetti to support of Yes Equality.
Daintree believe in making beautiful things out of paper. So when paper was used to print ugly lies in the run up to Ireland’s Marriage Equality referendum, we saw an opportunity. We created “Shred of Decency” – confetti made from 100% recycled lies.
We collected any negative, dishonest and homophobic flyers and leaflets and recycled them into beautiful confetti. Then we sold it in Daintree’s little shop on Camden Street and online on our purpose built microsite, with all profits going to support Marriage Equality.
The results were completely overwhelming – with more than 62 million media impressions in earned editorial coverage and over 6.2 million social media impressions over the course of the campaign. It was featured in publications all over the world – from Buzzfeed, to the Huffington Post, to Mashable and many, many others. This was all organic reach – not a single cent was spent on media.
Shred of Decency was also a huge turnaround for Daintree as a business – with a 15% increase in overall sales since the start of the campaign. What’s more, the image of the shop was fully restored in the eyes of the public.
Unsurprisingly, we sold out of confetti. Thousands of euro was raised for Yes Equality, and we’re proud to say we helped take lies and hate out of the Marriage Equality debate.
As for the most important result of all… On 22nd of May, Ireland became the first country in the world to approve marriage equality by a popular vote, with a landslide majority.
