An Post’s Address Point wins European Excellence Award

An Post, The Reputations Agency and JWT Folk were awarded the Corporate Social Responsibility award at the European Excellence in PR Awards held in Lisbon for the An Post Address Point service. The service provides a secure, personal postal address to people who are homeless or in temporary accommodation. The idea, developed by JWT Folk for An Post and activated by The Reputations Agency, has won four other international awards since the launch of the service in April 2019 – A Cannes Lion Award in the Sustainable Development Goals Category, a Clio Award and two Eurobest awards.

Speaking about Address Point, Anna McHugh, Head of Communications at An Post said, “Through Address Point, An Post aims to improve the quality of life for the communities in which we live and work. By working with partners we can improve access to essential services. We created a simple, practical facility that can help break the cycle of homelessness through the new Address Point service, a digital proxy address, linked to a local post office, which gives homeless individuals and families access to secure postal correspondence. We’d like to thank the An Post staff and postmasters who are making Address Point available across the country while special thanks goes to the charities and service providers who worked with us and who help their service users to access Address Point every day.”

Karl Waters, Creative Partner, JWT, said: “An Post has always had a very strong sense of purpose. As Ireland’s national postal service, An Post exists to improve the quality of life for people in Ireland, now and for generations to come, leaving no one behind. But unfortunately, there is one group in society that is being left behind. The homelessness figure has passed 10,000 and we are in the middle of a homelessness crisis. The irony of homelessness is that to get help, you need an address. Without an address, and reliable access to written correspondence, it is often difficult to access essential services like healthcare, education and employment. We brought a unique concept to An Post that they loved. An Post then brought this concept to life.  Address Point  helps people arrange medical appointments, contact children’s schools, apply for jobs and keep in touch with family and friends.”

Catherine Walsh, Head of the CSR at The Reputations Agency said, “We collaborated with An Post and JWT Folk to build a multi-phased, multi-platform CSR communications strategy around the launch of Address Point, a world’s first, which reached over 34 million people worldwide. Integral to this was building trusted relationships with the homeless charities and service providers, who then informed their clients about the service.”