Magazine vendors are among the people who need the most of our appreciation. Instead of staying on the streets and doing nothing, they chose to work hard to earn their money. The Big Issue admires their work so much that it decided to reward them in an ingenious way. By giving them back what is theirs.
By partnering with digital bank Monzo and creative agency FCB Inferno, the magazine launched “Pay It Forward,” an interactive system that turns The Big Issue into the world’s first ‘resellable’ magazine. This means that each of the magazines that were bought from the street vendors can be sold-on every time after it’s been read. This way, each issue will do more good to the vendors that work so hard to live decently.
In order to resell them, every magazine comes with its own QR code that, once scanned, allows the readers to pay for it. Once it is passed to another friend, he or she can do the same and help vendors regain their dignity with a reselling fee. The magazine’s new scheme aims to help vulnerable sellers to earn more money and overcome the issues homeless people usually face in this cashless society.
To spread the word even further, The Big Issue ‘hired’ a group of local celebrities including sports broadcaster Gary Lineker, singer and actor Roger Daltrey, and footballer Vincent Kompany, who all proudly promote the intriguing initiative. Alongside Alistair Stewart and the cast of Wicked, the celebs have bought a series of copies of the magazine which are now in general circulation.
A Big Issue vendor sells, on average, one magazine per hour worked. For each sale, they earn £1.25. But unlike begging, selling magazines or newspapers offers such people the means to learn how to grow their income, develop money management skills, build networks, and lastly, to reintegrate into mainstream society. Pay It Forward is proving to be an amazing opportunity for these sellers, as it allows them to transform their time into a more lucrative pastime. The process is easy: Buy the magazine. Enjoy reading it. And then sell it on. This can be repeated over and over again until a c cycle is created.
Aaron Dunn, who sells The Big Issue in Covent Garden, said: “It is great because you get to earn extra money on top of the sales you make of the magazine. You never know how far it is going to go. One of my magazines has already been passed around over 20 times!”
“By turning every Big Issue buyer into a potential seller, we’ll activate a huge and untapped force for good with each vendor being the head of a chain of entrepreneurship. While all Big Issue magazines are made to do good, this means that every magazine can keep on doing good,” further explains Owen Lee, Chief Creative Officer at FCB Inferno, in a press release.
This is not the first time the creative agency FCB Inferno worked with the Big Issue. Back in 2015, the partners founded “Change Please,” a platform that provides care for homeless people such as a home to rent and a full London living wage. All the homeless people had to do was to let themselves be trained as baristas to run a coffee shop. So far, the agency and the magazine have managed to take over 85 people off the streets. What an effort!