The Work

Narrative developed the marketing and communications apparatus for the nation’s largest AIDS service organization. The result? A doubling of Housing Works’s operating budget in less than five years.

Narrative’s scope included an audit of the Housing Works brand and a complete rethinking of the organization’s strategic messaging and visual design language the ground up. A large part of Narrative’s work included providing marketing support for Housing Works advocacy campaigns, promoting its HIV healthcare and supportive housing services (to thousands of New Yorkers with different cultures and languages), fundraising, and social enterprise ventures.

On the enterprise side, Narrative helped grow the Housing Works Thrift Shops and Housing Works Bookstore, and helped to design and market multimillion dollar charity events featuring collaborators including Thom Browne, Jonathan Adler, John Mayer, and Bob Dylan. The charity recently opened the first recreational cannabis dispensary in New York City, generating $12MM in six months.

Narrative also redesigned and relaunched the Housing Works website and shophousingworks.com - the charity’s wildly successful online auction website. Creative campaigns included an award-winning collaboration between Marc Jacobs, Soho Grand Hotels, Vogue, and a formerly homeless HIV-positive New Yorker who became a supermodel for a day – highlighting how designers can help Housing Works Thrift Shops support lifesaving medical and housing services.

Special thanks to: Ian Crowther