Even Harry Styles

The 54-question national Census, held every five years, is a low interest subject. Our challenge was to find ways to make it relevant for disengaged young people.

We spotted a surprising way to make it relevant, by making the most of an event taking place in New Zealand on the same day as Census – the sold-out Harry Styles concert, his only performance in New Zealand. Census law requires every EVERYONE in New Zealand on Census Day to take part, and that includes any tourists or visitors who happened to be here on the day. When we discovered this included the champion of inclusivity himself, Harry Styles, who was set to perform to 40,000 fans in Auckland on Census night, this seemed like a golden real-time opportunity to make Census relevant - and a Census story people would want to share.

Harry Styles, as a champion of inclusivity and with huge appeal amongst our target audience, was the ideal influencer. However, despite having over 81 million followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, he doesn't promote anything but his own music on social media.

So when we discovered he would be in New Zealand and should take part in Census, we wanted to see if his passionate fan base would be excited to share in the experience with him – creating hype and cultural relevance around an otherwise dry form-filling event.

A week before Census (and Harry’s concert), the story was ignited on social with a fun but unexpected tweet from a government department: everyone in New Zealand on Census Day would need to take part, even former members of One Direction.

To further appeal to Harry to advocate for the Census at his concert, we had a Census scarf delivered to his Kiwi guitarist Ny Oh, for her to take on stage, and signs for eager fans to hold in the crowd and in front of news media covering the event.