Everyone Deserves to Feel Clean: The Shocking Truth About Hygiene Poverty and How You Can Make a Difference

In July, Brand Champions team members, friends and some of our fantastic colleagues, met at Holy Sepulchre London to spend the morning packing tote bags for our charity partner The Hygiene Bank .

Before we started we had the pleasure of meeting Father Nick Mottershead FCA who shared with us some harrowing statistics and stories about why The Hygiene Bank is working to make a difference in hygiene poverty.

I haven’t stopped thinking about the day since. I have always taken for granted the fact I can shower and wash my mop of hair with products of my choice and use deodorant that I have bought quite easily with no need to balance up whether I eat food that day or wash.

But after our session, I will never take this for granted again. Or the fact that I haven’t had to leave my home to escape domestic violence, leaving everything I have behind and most likely no longer able to fund my hygiene products.

There was so much to think about, I wanted to shout about it from the rooftops, we could have such an impact on people around us, in wealthy cities, no child should be missing school because they don’t have dental hygiene products and now they’re suffering from toothache. It’s not acceptable.

It is not acceptable that 4.2 million people in the UK cannot afford basic hygiene products.

So, this week’s #FridayAd is my attempt to continue sharing and shouting about this and I am featuring The Hygiene Bank’s new campaign that is hitting OOH in Manchester and Birmingham.

The interactive ad draws people in, with bright engaging images, then, as the person stands in the space of the ad, it reveals the awful statistics and truths about the people in the images. Hygiene poverty impacts your ability to be a part of society, and the ads do an incredible job of bringing this shocking information to people in these diverse cities.

The campaign - ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ is an award winner but I think the real win is this will enable THB to reach so many more people. And it has a clear call to action - get yourself to Boots UK and donate.

In fact - hi lovely person reading this - get yourself to Boots and donate! Or text BASICS to 70450 to donate ￡20 now. What a difference that could make. You could be enabling someone to sharpen up before a job interview that could change their lives.

Great work The Hygiene Bank , Boots UK , Ocean Outdoor and ACNE London .

Everyone deserves to feel clean.

- Kerry Nicholson ?????