Trust Deed Scotland
Six in ten felt ashamed. So nobody asked.
We surveyed 2,829 people who had already been through it, and built Scotland's largest debt awareness campaign on what they told us rather than on what the sector assumes.
2,829
People surveyed, all of whom had already been through a debt solution
97%
Wish they had sought debt advice sooner than they did
91%
Were losing sleep before they asked for help
The Challenge
Almost half the people Trust Deed Scotland helps waited a year or more before asking. That delay is not financial. It is shame.
Trust Deed Scotland is the country's largest provider of statutory debt solutions, and it wanted its biggest ever national awareness campaign to do one thing: get people to ask sooner.
The obstacle was not a lack of services or a lack of information. Six in ten customers told us they felt ashamed or embarrassed. Nearly half believed they could handle it alone. Those two beliefs together buy a year of silence, and a year makes everything harder to fix.
So the campaign had to say something that cut through both at once: you are not unusual, and asking early changes the outcome.
Nobody responds to a statistic about debt.
They respond to a statistic about themselves.
The survey gave us the campaign. 91% were losing sleep. 90% said their mental health was suffering. 88% were hiding their debt from family and friends. Two thirds had cut spending on socialising and hobbies, a third had cut back on food, and more than half were working longer hours or a second job to stay afloat.
Those are not statistics about debt. They are a description of somebody's Tuesday night, and they are recognisable to anybody living it.
Which set the strategy. Rather than explain what a trust deed is, show people that the private experience they assume is theirs alone is in fact almost universal among the people who eventually come forward. Shame survives on the belief that you are the only one. Evidence is what kills it.
What We Did
Radio for the private moments, out of home for the public ones, and one billboard that made people stop in the street.
National radio carried the research findings into the places people are alone with the problem: at home, in the car, at work. Debt is thought about privately, and audio is the one medium that reaches somebody privately without a screen anybody else can see.
Out of home on bus shelters in high-footfall areas gave the campaign its scale and its repetition, placing the message on the ordinary journeys the audience was making anyway.
The centrepiece was a large-scale 3D special-build: a three-dimensional phone, mounted off the billboard, displaying the average debt of the people who come to Trust Deed Scotland for help. Scotland's first of its kind. A number on a poster is ignorable. The same number on an object you can see from across the street is not.
The Results
The research gave the campaign its message, and it gave the sector its evidence.
The case for asking early. 97% of customers wish they had sought debt advice sooner than they did. That single figure is the campaign's whole argument, and it comes from the people best placed to make it.
What changes afterwards. 90% said their mental health improved once they entered a debt solution, and 94% felt more confident managing a household budget. The relief is not theoretical and it arrives faster than people expect.
What the silence costs. Before asking, 91% were losing sleep, 90% reported their mental health was suffering and 88% were hiding the problem from family and friends. Published together, those numbers do the work no amount of reassurance can: they prove the experience is shared.
The campaign. Scotland's first 3D special-build of its kind, national radio and high-footfall out of home, built end to end on the client's own customer evidence.