With rising living costs, the furlough scheme drawing to a halt and the end of the Universal Credit top up, thousands of people will turn to The Salvation Army this winter to get back on their feet.
Earlier this year, we were called on by the charity to help bring a fresh approach to their 2021 Christmas video strategy, revisiting what they’d done before as well as holding workshops and messaging sessions to understand their key objectives, audiences and contributors.
Emotive story-telling
The output was an emotive social ad – which formed part of the charity’s Christmas fundraising campaign – to encourage donations amongst their new and existing donors to support their crucial Christmas appeal.
The ad focuses on the real life experience of contributor, Wayne, who has directly benefited from The Salvation Army’s service – eventually enabling him to break the cycle of rough sleeping and unstable accommodation.
For Wayne, being able to open his front door and welcome his family this Christmas means the world, after being homeless and struggling with addiction since age 15. We had the privilege of working with Wayne to create a narrative that visually captured and represented his story, alongside the incredible work that The Salvation Army carries out at this time of year.
As well as planning filming locations and managing the shoot, we worked with the charity’s marketing team to devise a strategy to ensure the video was optimised for paid and organic, with various different versions and different calls to action to maximise engagement opportunities.
The build-up to Christmas
We’re really proud to have been a part of this campaign and it’s given us the chance to work on something that we believe is fundamentally important at Christmas time.
The video ad was activated in the build-up to Christmas via all social channels and after one week, has already received 2.1k reactions, 183 comments and 330 shares – so we’re really looking forward to seeing the full results. And, if you can donate (even a little!) please follow the link.
