GS&P creates “Poverty Line Prices” campaign for Tipping Point Community to show people what shopping feels like for the very poor. Via Adweek:
One in 10 Bay Area families (about 788,000 people in all) live below the poverty line. To raise awareness about this massive dissonance, San Francisco agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners took over a grocery store in the upscale Nob Hill neighborhood and charged regulars “Poverty Line Prices”—inflating products to five times their normal cost, with hidden cameras rolling.
Under “Poverty Line Prices,” created for the poverty-fighting organization Tipping Point Community, four rolls of toilet paper skyrocket from $3.46 to $17.30. Monthly bus passes, which normally cost $73, jump to $365. And milk goes from $4.88 to $24.40.
“The Bay Area is a tale of two cities: the haves and the have-nots,” says GS&P co-chairman Rich Silverstein. “We wanted people to get a small sense of the reality of living on the poverty line to truly understand the importance of Tipping Point’s mission.”
To calculate the prices used in the Poverty Line campaign, GS&P took the average costs of necessities and determined what percentage of a paycheck each item represents for a family living on the poverty line—whose figure is a federal standard guideline.