The Big Issue / LinkedIn: Emma

The Big Issue (TBI) and LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, have partnered on a pilot scheme to support nine of the magazine’s vendors who have lost their livelihoods and their sense of community as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The partnership, concepted and managed by FCB Inferno, harnesses the incredible power of Linkedin’s network to support the Big Issue vendors, who have been suffering due to the effects of COVID. Footfall on the high streets where many of them ply their trade is much lower, and many of their loyal customers are still working from home, far away from their own offices. The Big Issue vendors taking part in the pilot, who are based all around the UK and run their own micro-businesses selling the magazines, have joined LinkedIn to find a new lifeline for their work and reconnect with their old customers, as they remain unable to sell the magazine during the latest national lockdown. The nine vendors have received specialist and bespoke training from LinkedIn volunteers to help them build their digital confidence to reach an online customer base, find new opportunities, and engage with a new community who can support them. In addition, they have received training in the best practices of disseminating the news and stories found in the magazines. They have also received tablets donated from Dixons Carphone, the business behind Currys, PC World and Carphone Warehouse, to help them access their LinkedIn profiles and online training. The vendors will be able to reach out to new and existing customers on LinkedIn to let them know that they can purchase a copy of The Big Issue digitally. The vendors’ profiles are all searchable on the platform through The Big Issue’s LinkedIn page. Through company pages, they can search for regular customers who worked in offices near their old pitches and reach out to re-connect on LinkedIn. Big Issue vendors run their own micro-businesses buying copies of the magazine for £1.50 and selling to the public for £3, keeping the difference. In this way the magazine provides them with the means to earn a legitimate income. The partnership with LinkedIn aims to take the vendors into a professional space, giving them access to a platform which reinforces that they are working for a living, and allows them to increase their sales in the face of the ongoing challenges in the Covid-19 pandemic. The campaign was created by creative agency FCB Inferno, as the latest in their ongoing business transformations for the Big Issue organisation. This has included Change Please, now entering its sixth year, which trains vendors up as baristas to run coffee carts; The world's first resellable magazine, Pay it Forward powered by Monzo, to get vendors into the financial system; and the social enterprise’s first ever Christmas appeal, Remember Me, in response to the Coronavirus pandemic in December 2020.
The vendors will be able to reach out to new and existing customers on LinkedIn to let them know that they can purchase a copy of The Big Issue digitally. The vendors’ profiles are all searchable on the platform through The Big Issue’s LinkedIn page. Through company pages, they can search for regular customers who worked in offices near their old pitches and reach out to re-connect on LinkedIn. Big Issue vendors run their own micro-businesses buying copies of the magazine for £1.50 and selling to the public for £3, keeping the difference. In this way the magazine provides them with the means to earn a legitimate income. The partnership with LinkedIn aims to take the vendors into a professional space, giving them access to a platform which reinforces that they are working for a living, and allows them to increase their sales in the face of the ongoing challenges in the Covid-19 pandemic.