How Muslim Hands is bringing bread to Yemen this Ramadan

On the eve of Ramadan, Sahirah Javaid from Muslim Hands gives us a behind the scenes look at their successful Blessed Bakeries campaign, which has enabled them to open three bakeries in Yemen.

Ramadan is the most important time of the year for us at Muslim Hands. As a faith-based charity, this special month is where we receive the bulk of our donations from donors across the world. Though we know what projects and campaigns we will be pushing, donations from this month sets the tone of other projects that could also be implemented, to help as many people as possible, in the year ahead.

In the past year due to the generosity of our donors we have raised over £175,000 for our Blessed Bakeries campaign, which has allowed us to open three bakeries in Yemen. This will provide thousands of loaves of bread to women, children, and those with disabilities in Yemen and later Syria who have been internally displaced because of civil war.

We were able to raise a significant amount in a short space of time using a variety of strategies and platforms to increase awareness for this campaign. It was vital to work closely with our partners and colleagues on the ground in Yemen to provide us with the information we needed on the projects, beneficiary stories, images, and videos, which were all used to push this campaign to our donors.

Why Yemen is important in the Islamic faith

We used Facebook and Instagram to share photos and videos of people who were benefitting from the bread factory. We created social media posts from a religious perspective on why Yemen is important in the Islamic faith and shared content around this that many of our donors may not have been aware of. We also created targeted online adverts on Facebook and Google which encouraged our donors to donate towards the campaign. Media coverage was also obtained through radio stations and newspapers where colleagues who had been on the ground were able to share their experiences.

Reaching a range of Muslim audiences

This Ramadan we will be implementing all the above but also utilising fundraising platforms such as Just Giving – YallaGive and Launch Good that allows us to increase and build our donor reach worldwide. Translating our material to languages that are identified by our main donors has proven to be helpful, which has been achieved by having multilingual adverts on Ramadan radio stations throughout the UK and adverts in multilingual newspapers. We have also established relationships with TV channels that have a large Muslim audience base worldwide such as Islam Channel English and Urdu for fundraising and awareness purposes. We have already started distributing our Ramadan mailer to a large portion of our donors, which includes the Blessed Bakeries campaign. We are always looking at innovative ways to share our work with new audiences especially the younger generation. TikTok has been a great way to do this.

How to launch your own podcast

Earlier this year, Susannah Birkwood from WWF International launched her own podcast, Storytelling for Impact, a podcast for people who tell stories that change the world.

We asked Susannah to share some key lessons that she’s learnt along the way.

I first decided I wanted to launch my own podcast in the summer of 2018. It took me a full two and a half years to take action. I lost count of the times that I’d tell myself I didn’t have time to dedicate to it on top of a busy full-time job or that I was foolish to think that people would want to listen to what I had to say. Sometimes I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do it on. On other occasions it just felt too much like hard work. I finally managed to overcome these thoughts and launched Storytelling for Impact early this year. It’s an amazing feeling to have made it happen at long last! Here’s what I’ve learnt since then.

1. Doing a multi-day course is a great way to get started

Taking action on a goal like starting a podcast can feel really difficult – that’s why it took me so long! Doing a multi-day course promising to teach me “how to start a podcast” changed all that. The course I signed up to took place in January on Zoom. Every morning we’d learn about podcasting, but the best part was the afternoons, when we’d put our ideas into action, knowing that there was a group of people waiting to hold us accountable the next day. By the time the week was over, I had a podcast title, a fully-developed concept, my recording and editing software downloaded, my equipment bought, my own theme tune, my trailer published, and a list of guests I wanted to approach for interview. There was no going back. A month later, I launched my first two episodes.

2. All you really need is a mic

Some people invest thousands in getting the highest spec equipment imaginable for their podcast. But if you’re launching your own show, there’s really no need for costly bells and whistles. I paid about £30 for this microphone, spend $9.99 a month on my hosting platform and a few pounds a month to have a simple WordPress website with my own .net domain name. You don’t strictly speaking need to pay for your hosting platform either – you could use a free one like Soundcloud. All you really need is a mic – you can assess whether it’s worth investing in more kit once you’re up and running.

3. It’s not a numbers game

As someone who works in media relations, I tend to be a bit of a snob about the reach that a piece of content gets. I’m used to producing or pitching work that captures several thousand pairs of eyeballs at least – millions when working with broadcast media or global outlets. Podcasts are very different. The number of listeners pales in comparison to those on other media formats, but the people who do listen are highly engaged – around 70% of podcast listeners will listen to all or most of an episode. Wonderfully, they’re also often much keener to hear about complex ideas – as The Times’s Catherine Nixey once wrote, “While the rest of the internet silts up with cats and fake news, the podcast is unashamedly intelligent”. 

Currently I’m getting around 75 downloads in the first 7 days after my episodes are released, putting my show in the top 25% of podcasts, according to Buzzsprout. I’m thrilled at this – and sincerely grateful for every download received so far.

4. Most people are flattered to be asked for an interview

I’m a journalist by background and have interviewed hundreds of people. But, asides from my early teenage years when I used to tell people I was a “freelance journalist” in order to score interviews with my favourite bands, I’ve mostly only done interviews when backed by a big media brand. So having joined the INGO sector four years ago, I was a bit nervous no-one would want to talk to me if I wasn’t representing an outlet everyone had heard of. I needn’t have worried. Asides from a bit of false start – the first two people I approached to interview didn’t seem especially keen – every one of the people I’ve approached to come on the show has been really enthusiastic. It’s worth remembering that most people are flattered to be asked to talk about themselves, particularly when they’re in lockdown. The guest I’ve booked in for one of my upcoming episodes is a huge deal in the journalism world and someone whose work I’ve admired for years. He said yes within hours of being asked.

As the excellent podcaster Oprah Winfrey once said, “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”

Storytelling for Impact is available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. The latest episode is an interview with Rachel Erskine from IBT member Amref Health Africa about ethical storytelling.

How British Red Cross found their biggest audience on TikTok

TikTok is the fastest growing social platform of 2020 and has become an important tool for community building, brand engagement and even social activism. This year, British Red Cross have grown their TikTok channel into their largest social media audience in just a few months. Nana Crawford, Social Media Manager at British Red Cross, gives her top 5 tips for NGOs wanting to make the most of TikTok.

 

1. Choose the right moment to launch your channel

After seeing that the users on TikTok were predominantly quite young, we decided to use it for our campaign on introducing first aid into the school curriculum. We knew this would be a strong message for the younger TikTok audience, and would be something they might already be familiar with from conversations in their schools and colleges. That was a great starting point for us, and allowed us to test out different types of content.

 

2. Be flexible with your content production

I would always recommend that if you are going to start a brand TikTok channel, you need to have a lot of flexibility to be able to do whatever you want and be really creative. Otherwise you’re just recreating another Instagram channel on TikTok, and that’s not the point. The nature of the content on TikTok means that you need a different sign off process for content – basically, not have one! It doesn’t make sense to do a comedy sketch video and then send it to a director for sign off, because they wouldn’t get it and you would lose the momentum of posting the video.

 

3. Experiment to discover what your audience likes

It can be really hit and miss with what content does well on TikTok, so we’re still experimenting with different things. Sometimes we’ll post a video thinking it will do really well, and then it doesn’t. Then we’ll post something random we’ve been sent in by a volunteer, and it gets loads of engagement! A lot of it is to do with trying things and learning what your audience likes. Then it’s all about the timing and taking advantage of the hashtag challenges.

 

4. Stay true to your brand values

On TikTok it’s really hard to have a specific campaign goal in a sense of conversions, because it’s difficult to track on the app. Instead, you need to approach it from a brand awareness perspective. For us it was a great opportunity to show just how relevant we are, and that we can produce content that appeals to a young audience in their style. But everyone needs to find their niche and find what works for them. There’s no point trying to replicate what someone else has done, because that’s not the point of TikTok. The point of TikTok is to showcase your personality, or your brand’s personality. 

 

5. Engage your wider networks and volunteers

It’s not always our team that comes up with the ideas. It’s been a great opportunity to engage with our younger volunteers. They’ll often send us ideas or TikToks they’ve done, which is great because it’s a channel that they’re familiar with. For example, if a volunteer sends us a dance they want us to share, it also gives us a chance to profile some of the amazing volunteers we work with, which is really nice.

Anything But Normal: How the media can be a force for change in the aftermath of Covid-19

Abbie Wells writes about Practical Action’s new campaign and urges the media to work with INGOs as a force for change in the aftermath of Covid-19.

Coronavirus has radically changed life as we know it, but what’s clear is that there’s huge enthusiasm and support for the world not to go back to normal once it’s over – pollution levels are at a record low, plant and animal species that were dwindling are making a resurgence and the world as we know it is unrecognisable. What the world needs now is INGOs, private sector, governments and institutions to work in collaboration and partnership to forge a new world order that protects and benefits those that have suffered the worst effects of Covid-19.

To us, collaboration is key and our work with big corporates and foundations enables us to look up from the detail and the grass roots, take a different perspective and create answers to multi-layered problems. In working with us, we help ensure the private sector understands the needs of the people they want to work with.

A unique opportunity for the media to use their influence

The media should play a key role in helping the world emerge for the better – looking at the way they operate and act almost as convenors of those who can help make change happen, rather than simply operating as news broadcasters. This is a unique opportunity for the media to use their powerful influence as a force for good, in a world where objectivity is fine, but even objectivity itself has become politicised.

Practical Action has many examples of working with the media to generate positive, inspirational and mutually-beneficial coverage that has gone far beyond a simple article in a newspaper. For example, recently, Damian Carrington, The Guardian’s Environment Editor travelled to Sudan to see one of our projects that is helping farmers at the coalface of climate change to regreen the desert and change their lives.

This article was seen by the Head of UNEP in Sudan who went on to share it with the Sudanese Prime Minister and the wider donor community, including DfID. A great example of the impact a positive piece of media coverage can have.

We’ve also worked with a number of Bauer Media outlets including Magic FM and Absolute Radio through partnerships on our UK AidMatch campaigns. These partnerships are important for reaching new people with development messages but equally as a reciprocal, collaborative relationship that benefits Bauer financially and Practical Action in building support and fundraising.

The world should not return to the way it was

At Practical Action we’ve launched a campaign called Anything But Normal, calling for the world not to return to its previous state before coronavirus hit. There’s already been some great strides in the discussion with BBC Radio 4, BBC Sounds and the World Service running a series called ‘Rethink’ focusing on how the world can emerge in a better position post covid-19 and The World Economic Forum are hosting a number of discussions entitled ‘The Great Reset’ which bring together thought leaders, NGOs, the private sector and the media. But there’s more to do and the conversation needs to continue to gather pace and not become side-lined and forgotten.

Collaborations such as that which BBC Futures developed with NESTA are a perfect example of the media working in partnership with NGOs to effect change and at Practical Action it’s something we’re keen to explore.

How Islamic Relief is using a gaming app to reach young audiences

Last October Islamic Relief UK launched an innovative gaming app, Virtue Reality. Its aim was to inform young people about how aid works and to tackle prejudice against Muslims. Judith Escribano, Head of Communications at Islamic Relief UK, explains the story behind Virtue Reality.

A couple of years ago, Mark Galloway, Director of IBT, asked me what my boys watched on television. ‘Nothing’, I replied. His eyes nearly popped out of his head! I told him that they and most of their friends just watch YouTube videos and play online games on their phones.

And that set me thinking. How could we, as the communications department of a charity, reach young people if they weren’t watching television or reading papers? And when algorithms mean they may not be seeing the social media posts we want them to see?

At the same time, I was reading Shelina Janmohamed’s book Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World. And I discovered that young British Muslims either felt that they were not represented in films, TV programmes or video games; or when they were, they saw themselves represented as terrorists (if male) or weak and oppressed (if female). And I thought about the impact that must have on the psyche of a young British Muslim.

I wondered if we could produce a video game app as a means of reaching young British Muslims and as a way to communicate Islamic Relief UK’s two key messages: aid works, and Muslims are inspired by their faith to donate to charity and to do good in the world. Could this also be a way of tackling widespread islamophobia in the media?

 

We didn’t want our game to be preachy

Since we’d never done anything like this before, we didn’t know whether it would work, let alone how successful it would be. But the CEO of Islamic Relief Worldwide took a risk and allowed me to go ahead with the game without demanding any KPIs. A huge relief! We found a brilliant developer in Shahid Ahmad, the Managing Director of Ultimatum Games. As a Muslim, he had suffered Islamophobia and tokenism both in the gaming sector and society at large. He could bring his own experiences and passion to the project. But he also knew how to create compelling games. This was important to us because we didn’t want our game to be preachy. We wanted people to enjoy playing it, to share it, to talk about it. And to feel good about seeing people like themselves in it.

Shahid’s wealth of experience meant that he could create a game that was both informative AND fun. Starting with a microdam in Mali, players work their way through real-life projects run by Islamic Relief UK, hiring staff of different genders, ethnicities and appearances and earning ‘deed coins’ for their work. Once a certain amount of money is earned on a project, it is upgraded to different levels and once these levels are maxed out, new projects open up.

We rolled out Virtue Reality at Sheffield’s National Videogame Museum during Charity Week – a crucial fundraising initiative for Islamic Relief run by Islamic Student Societies at universities across the country. We invited local schools to come along and try out the game. And my media team targeted a range of media, recognising that this story straddles many themes: children’s; education; faith; BME; technology; charity; international development; local; and even mainstream news.

 

Broadcasters were keen to cover the launch

One of the reasons we had such success with media is that we made the launch visually attractive for broadcasters. Over an hour at the event was dedicated to children playing the game and being interviewed by journalists as they played. The BBC, Sky’s children’s programme FYI and the Islam Channel all attended and broadcast footage. We also prepared spokespeople for different specialities on the day: Shahid from the tech perspective; our Head of Programmes to talk about in-country work; our Head of Fundraising to talk about Charity Week. And myself to talk about where the idea came from. Having so much to offer meant we could give our diverse media exactly what they wanted.

The media interest validated the product. Editors who were quiet at first started warming up again a week after the launch event, having seen coverage on the BBC News website and across charity sector media. And the more the game was shared via external links online, the more it was shared on social media by influencers like Shuhei Yoshida (Sony’s President of Worldwide Studios), and Melissa Fleming, Director of Global Communications at the UN. Many communications professionals will be familiar with that domino effect of attention on your campaign or message. That was the case with Virtue Reality.

So far we have had coverage in over 50 outlets – and are still fielding interview requests three months after launch. It has been downloaded over 5,000 times and currently has a 5 star rating on the appstore and 4.8 star rating on Google PlayStore. And Virtue Reality’s journey is far from over. It has now been launched by our offices in Malaysia and Germany, and this year, offices in Canada, the US and Australia will introduce it to their markets.

Check it out for yourselves by downloading the app for free on the appstore or Google PlayStore. Tell us what you think!

 

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Judith Escribano is Head of Communications at Islamic Relief UK

How Save the Children helped rescue British children trapped in Syria

Last Autumn, Save the Children launched a successful campaign to bring the so called ‘ISIS children’ back to the UK. This group of orphans was stranded in an area of Syria previously controlled by ISIS. Media coverage played an important role in the success of the campaign as Dan Stewart, media manager at Save the Children explains.

Save the Children supporters recently helped transform the lives of a group of British children caught up in horrors far beyond their control.

The Government announced they were bringing home some of the innocent, British orphans who had been stranded in appalling conditions in overcrowded camps in northeast Syria after fleeing areas that had been under the control of ISIS.

Their short lives have been full of violence and fear but this brilliant news means these children have the precious chance to recover, have happy childhoods and live full lives. All children deserve that chance. And for the British children among them we can make it happen by bringing them to the UK.

This didn’t just happen on its own. It has taken a huge effort to get to this point and Save the Children campaigners have played an absolutely integral role. They spoke out in their thousands and our Government listened.

More than 10,000 campaigners emailed the Government calling on them to bring home all British children stranded in north-east Syria.These messages were sent in just five days, as support surged.

 

Media coverage

The campaign was given a boost when the BBC found three British orphans in a camp – stranded and in danger. Conditions for British children were now on the agenda but we were worried attention would die away before pressure built enough to make a difference. It was important for Save the Children to use our position as one of the few NGOs working in the northeast to keep the story going.

Fighting then came dangerously close to the British orphans’ camp. Hundreds of women and children fled and chaos reigned. But through our contacts Save the Children was able to confirm that the British orphans had been taken to safety nearby location, though they weren’t in our care.

Later, we were able to reveal that altogether there were more than 60 British children trapped in the area. This key part of the picture – previously unknown – generated widespread coverage in the media and helped decision-makers understand the scale of the issue.

All of this helped keep the issue high on the news and political agenda. Other voices joined in. Supportive articles in places like the Guardian and the Times soon followed.

Then we took our campaign direct to those in power. Save the Children projected ‘Don’t leave British children trapped in Syria’ onto the Houses of Parliament the evening before parliament dissolved for the election campaign. We sent a 50 sq m message that children’s lives cannot be left at risk for months in dangerous, freezing limbo while the election unfolds.

 

Impact

We started seeing positive signs coming from the corridors of power and the Government shifted position. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said for the first time that he thought ‘innocents should not be caught in the crossfire’ and he would look at whether British and orphans could be given safe passage to the UK. MPs from all parties spoke out in support and the Government acknowledged a duty of care to the British children in North East Syria. These are the building blocks of real change.

Everywhere we work has one thing in common: children are incredible. They want to play and learn, and just be children again. And they want to grow up to be doctors, teachers and football players. With the right care they can bounce back, recover and amaze us. They just need the chance. These children are no different, no matter what they’ve been dragged into by the decisions of adults.

By starting to bring these children home the Government showed they are prepared to do what’s right and stand up for children – even when it’s difficult. But this has to be only the start.

There are still as many as 60 British children that remain stranded in appalling conditions and Syria’s harsh winter will soon begin to bite. All are as innocent as those who have been rescued and our very real fear is that they won’t all survive to see the spring.

Everyone who helped bring these first children home should be incredibly proud, from campaigners making their voices heard to those working tirelessly behind the scenes. Every child saved is a triumph of compassion in the face of cruelty. Now it’s time to finish the job. They must all be brought home before it is too late.

Find out more about Save the Children’s campaign

 

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If your organisation is interested in becoming a member of IBT, please get in touch here.

 

How Plan created the period emoji

In October 2019, a new period emoji made its way onto mobile phones all over the world. Designed by the team at Plan International UK, the emoji hopes to open up the conversation around menstruation and period poverty. We asked Laura MacLeman, Press and Media Manager at Plan International UK to give us a behind the scenes look at the campaign.

 

Q: How did you conceive and develop the idea for the Period Emoji campaign?

Back in 2017, the idea came up in a creative brainstorm. We knew we had a series of PR moments coming up focusing on reproductive health and rights, starting with Menstrual Hygiene Day in May. We’d also just started to build our work on girls’ rights here in the UK and we were looking for ideas that bridged the gap between our global and domestic work. The emoji felt like a creative, relevant and low-cost way to talk about the sometimes difficult topic of menstruation, and something that could have a tangible impact. We carried out a survey which found that almost half of women aged 18-34 believed that a period emoji would make it easier to discuss periods with friends and partners. That seemed like reason enough to try and make it a reality.

 

Q: What was involved in bringing the idea to life? Can you describe the process of creating an emoji?

The best word I can use for the process is long! Our Digital team did a lot of research before the campaign, so we knew we had to show the Unicode Consortium – who decide which emojis to take forward – that there was a significant public interest in this emoji being approved, and that nothing else existed that could stand in its place.

We did this by getting our supporters involved from the outset. Our in-house designer created various emojis and we asked the public to vote for their favourite. We had over 55,000 votes, so we knew we were on to something.

Unfortunately, the ‘period pants’ design that was originally chosen was rejected by Unicode and we were advised that we were more likely to be successful if the emoji had multiple uses. So we teamed up with NHS Blood to resubmit the successful blood drop emoji (the runner-up in the public vote).

 

Q: Did you have a specific target audience in mind for this campaign?

We wanted to get as many people on board as possible to show Unicode that there was a real need for the emoji. But we also knew it would resonate most with a younger female audience – which is slightly different to our existing supporter base – so we adjusted our communications accordingly. Our main media targets were places like Marie Claire, Grazia and Stylist – outwardly feminist titles read by our primary target audience. We also did some paid Facebook activity targeting younger women.

 

Q: How did you plan your media and communications to sustain engagement with the public throughout the campaign?

We knew that if we could get campaigners and journalists on side from the beginning, they would want to follow this story through to the end no matter what the outcome. If we hadn’t got the emoji that would have been a story in itself – why have emojis for unicorns, wizards and at least three different types of trains been approved, but not one for periods?!

Our campaign on period stigma has also been a lot wider than the emoji. In the past two years we’ve released the only representative statistics on girls facing period poverty in the UK, written a first-of-its-kind report, Break the Barriers, looking at period poverty and stigma in the UK and how this is linked to period poverty globally, and our Let’s Talk. Period. programme with sexual health and wellbeing charity, Brook, which has supported a huge number of girls across the UK.

Building up our expertise in this area has meant we’re consistently quoted in media stories and have become a go-to voice on periods.

 

Q: How has the media responded? Why do you think this is?

The media reaction to the arrival of the period emoji has been incredible, and we’ve had coverage everywhere from the Sun to Vogue. We really targeted technology reporters and women’s interest press, both of whom had a specific interest in the emoji, and the majority of coverage has been really positive and supportive.

There has definitely been a step change in the past two or three years around reporting about menstruation, though. When we first launched the campaign in early 2017, members of my team remember it being a really hard sell, with journalists literally laughing down the phone. So much has changed in that time – period poverty in the UK, and the stigma that contributes to this, has been highlighted as a real issue by individuals and organisations including Plan International UK, so I think by the time we were successful in getting the emoji the need for it was much more widely accepted.

 

Q: What were some of the challenges you faced during this campaign?

Unicode don’t share a lot of information on their decision-making process, so we never knew the timelines they were working to. We found out that the emoji was on keyboards when a member of staff happened to download their IOS update! That made communications tricky, as we had to be nimble and reactive rather than being able to plan in advance. We had to get as much ready to go as possible, and then just work like mad to get it all out there.

 

Q: How have you measured the impact of the campaign?

The main objective of all Plan International UK’s campaigns is to create actual change for girls, so the approval of the emoji and it now being available to use globally is the most tangible measure of success, and the one we’re most proud of.

We aimed to create this change – and open up the conversation around periods at the same time – through media coverage and digital engagement, and had measurable KPIs. We were aiming for a social media reach of 2 million (with 2,000 engagements across all channels), 500 solidarity votes on which emoji to put forward, and a modest 20 media clippings (as previously mentioned, the media environment wasn’t as period-friendly then as it is now).

The campaign completely outperformed these targets; from the activity surrounding the approval of the emoji in February 2019 alone we had 295 pieces of UK media coverage (and many more globally), our social media posts reached 4 million people with 8,500 engagements and drove 30,000 visits to our website – all at no cost.

It’s also been really interesting to see that the emoji has resonated across countries, and our colleagues in other Plan offices have been able to get real cut-through in their media landscapes too – from the Netherlands to Australia and even the government-run channels in China! So in that sense it’s been a truly global campaign.

Find out more about Plan’s Period Emoji Campaign

 

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If your organisation is interested in becoming a member of IBT, please get in touch here.

How Oxfam made sustainable fashion mainstream news

Oxfam’s Second Hand September was one of its most successful campaigns, tapping into a public appetite, particularly amongst shoppers, to reduce their carbon footprint. What made the campaign so successful?

We asked Cordelia Kretzschmar, Head of Public Relations and Emma Fabian, Senior PR Press Officer at Oxfam GB to give us a behind the scenes look at the campaign.

 

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the campaign?

Cordelia: As the rest of the world has become more and more interested in the sustainable fashion story, we’ve found that it offers a rare opportunity for us to join up a number of things that Oxfam stands for. It really goes straight to the heart of what we do. Because if you buy second hand clothing from Oxfam all of the profits go towards the planet and the world’s poorest people. So it’s a double whammy for us. It felt like a really authentic and joined up campaign.

Emma: The actual idea was thought up by an individual in Oxfam, and then that was accepted by the organisation as the campaign that we would be running in the Summer.

C: We wanted to reach consumers and speak to them about something simple they can do so that they feel empowered about being able to do something about climate change. It also gave us an opportunity to talk about the wider issues around climate change. Because it often feels like such a huge problem, people get a bit paralysed about it. So we took that as a starting point and went from there.

 

Q: How did you plan your media campaign for maximum impact?

C: We knew that our job over the Summer was to get as much coverage as possible so that lots of people signed up to take the pledge. It was a crucial time period, so it was a bit of a no brainer to use our long-standing relationship with Glastonbury to launch the campaign. We were fortunate to get the headline acts of the festival to donate their stage outfits to us. So we had a team of people running around the backstage dressing rooms, and full support of the festival to make that happen. And the bands were amazing! We ended up with some incredible items, including Kylie Minogue’s sun visor! That story just got absolutely phenomenal coverage. It went around the world. So because of that celebrity buy in we launched the campaign really nicely at Glastonbury. It was part of a sequence of stories we mapped out to take us right from June through to the very beginning of September.

E: We commissioned a survey and conducted research showing that people got a lot of satisfaction from buying second hand. That generated a news story. Then later in the Summer we had a celebrity fashion shoot with Stella Tennant and her daughter, where they were wearing Oxfam clothes. We did a lot of work pitching that into the media, getting some definite features placed with the FT, Grazia and The Guardian before we did the shoot. Then afterwards, there was amazing coverage of that shoot. I suppose what both those things echo is that we’re using relationships that we’ve made over a long period of time; with Glastonbury and the relationships we’ve made in the fashion world. Which meant we had these influential voices speaking on Oxfam’s behalf.

C: The beauty of all of these stories was that it was an extremely cost effective campaign. For example the Glastonbury media story, which went global, was negligible in cost because it was just an email to the agents of the acts who were donating the clothing. This is always something we strive very hard to achieve.

 

Q: Did you face any difficulties getting the media interested in your campaign?

C: We were aware that the news agenda would be pretty busy during September. The MPs came back and it all started to kick off politically. We were unsure about how that would work for us. But I actually think a lot of outlets were looking for something a little more uplifting that wasn’t Westminster-based. You just have to be agile and adapt to what’s happening in the outside world as well as what’s happening internally.

E: When you’re talking about editorial and pitching to the media, there are never any guarantees. You just have to believe that what you’re doing is good. And that it’s news worthy. But you never know, because it’s not an exact science.

 

Q: How did you continue to build and sustain the interest around the campaign?

E: We are a very busy, very small team, so we jumped on every opportunity that we saw. We just kept pushing. Obviously there needs to be interest for you to be able to keep pushing, but we created momentum by being very proactive.

What we’re especially proud of is the way that it’s been adopted by people who also feel like they own the issue. There’s been loads and loads of mentions of #SecondHandSeptember in all sorts of media without necessarily attributing to Oxfam, because people have just made it their own. It’s become a thing!

And it’s done really well on social media as well. Particularly on Instagram, where we’ve had record levels of engagement. We’ve approached it very strategically, and the momentum we created throughout the Summer allowed our stories build. 

C: It’s a snowball effect. Once you launch something successfully into the media, it gets a life of its own. And that’s what’s happened here.

 

Q: When you started the campaign, did you have a specific target audience in mind?

C: I think it’s fair to say that we know the profile of the kinds of people who engage with the issue of sustainable fashion, and we know the profiles of the people who care about climate change because we’re very insight led here. It’s the smart way to do media work. But we are also always very aware that we’re talking to the whole of the UK through journalists and that in order to grow a movement we need to be speaking to everybody. So we wanted to make this very accessible to everyone.

 

Q: How have you measured the impact of the campaign?

C: We’ve got some fairly early stats on the number of people who took part, which was 62,000. We’ve also done some number crunching internally, and we can say that shoppers slashed the UK’s carbon footprint by 1500 tonnes in September – the equivalent of driving around the world 200 times!

E: We also do our evaluation of the campaign e.g. how many times the hashtag was used, how many times things were shared etc. Those numbers are very good. 37,000 people shared the hashtag. And from a comms perspective it has allowed us to make lots of new relationships, so that sets us up for the work we will continue to do beyond September.

 

Q: You’ve obviously had great reach and impact with this campaign, how did it compare to your original goals and targets?

C: It’s smashed them! And it’s not all down to our team. This was a massive cross organisational campaign! I guess this is a great example of what happens when you get real organisational buy in. The 62,000 people who signed up, they were being recruited at festivals across the summer by our teams on the ground. We’ve also got a social media team who were pushing out our messaging and repackaging our media and looking for content for our social channels. And we had a whole strategy around reaching out to digital influencers. Across the board, all the teams that worked across this have contributed to genuinely smashing the targets.

Find out more about the Second Hand September Campaign

 

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If your organisation is interested in becoming a member of IBT, please get in touch here.

Bringing Cox’s Bazar to East London

In August, the British Red Cross gave London’s shoppers a chance to witness life in the world’s largest refugee camp.

This immersive pop-up installation of Cox’s Bazar, along with an innovative 360˚ communications campaign, hoped to remind the public of the ongoing plight of the 740,000 refugees who were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar over 2 years ago.

During their week-long installation at Stratford’s Westfield Shopping Centre, we dropped in to speak to Farah Ghulamali, Corporate Partnerships and Communications Advisor, to hear how the campaign came together.

 

Q: How did you develop the idea for this campaign?

We needed to do something to re-engage the media and the public with our Myanmar Appeal, so conversations around the campaign began in January. The idea for the installation actually came from something we’d seen the Norwegian Red Cross do during their Syria campaign. They rebuilt a Syrian home in Ikea’s flagship Oslo store, juxtaposing it very effectively with the Ikea show homes.

We couldn’t take people to experience Cox’s Bazar, but this installation would be the closest we could get to helping people understand the situation, what it’s like to make the journey as a refugee and what living in a refugee camp is like. I took this idea to our international and fundraising teams, and from there we developed a brief and asked different production agencies to tender for it.

 

 

Q: Who was involved in bringing the idea to life?

The production company we decided to work with are called Ministry of Fun. We haven’t worked with them before, but they had a lot of experience with theatre events and set design, which was the sort of expertise we needed. It was a mammoth operation. They were working 12 hours to rig this on Sunday night – from 6 until 6! Making sure all the tech worked and that everything was accurate to the real images and content we’d shared with them.

Our content team worked really hard to deliver all the videos and photos, and we collaborated very closely with our international team to ensure that the content was accurate. We also worked with our individual giving team to have face-to-face fundraisers on the stand, informing people about how they can continue to support the appeal long-term.

 

Q: Why did you choose Westfield, London?

We were looking for a public space in London, so one of our partners, JCDecaux (the advertising company), came to us with a shortlist of options. Westfield seemed like the best option for the footfall – it has nearly 1 million visitors every week – and the space size. But also for the dwell time, as we know that people have time to look around when they’re shopping. JCDecaux then negotiated a really great charity rate for us – one that Ministry of Fun could hardly believe!

 

Q: The pop-up installation ran from August 12th – 18th, why did you choose these dates?

We wanted to do something for the 2-year anniversary which falls on August 25th, but were keen to run the campaign slightly earlier so that we could be the first ones contacting the media. The actual date also falls over the bank holiday, so we didn’t want to miss the usual footfall because of that.

 

Q: How have you found the reception from the public?

The feedback has been really great – whether you already know what’s going on or not, you can’t help but be gripped by what you see. Westfield in August is a really mixed audience – family, kids and older people. It has definitely helped us reach more people who wouldn’t otherwise be aware of Red Cross’s work.

 

 

Q: How have the media responded?

It’s been good so far. We’ve had Reuters and Press Association pick it up, as well as the Mail Online. We’ve also had a lot of really interesting international coverage from Germany, Australia and Spain! It’s a very multifaceted campaign and is about so much more than just engaging with the media. We’re also fundraising and trying to raise awareness in the public eye.

 

Q: What impact do you hope that this campaign has?

I hope that this campaign reminds people that this is the world’s largest refugee camp. That there are 1 million people living in this camp with nowhere to go, who have been forced to flee with nothing. They have had to leave their families and livelihoods behind. Many are now having to rebuild their lives, and it’s all with the support of the humanitarian agencies that are running this camp – agencies like the Red Cross. So, it’s vital that people continue to support us.

 

Q: What are you doing alongside the installation to make sure you’re able to deliver the desired impact?

Our social media team are posting across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn all week. We’ve also had support from Westfield’s communication channels, and a couple of our corporate partners are helping out. For example, Samsung have donated free digital ads, and WeTransfer have given us ad space on their wallpapers. We have so much content coming out of this campaign, so we knew we could deliver something really creative in the style that WeTransfer like.

We’ve also had great support from our high-value donors. We held a high-value giving event and invited our corporate prospects to come and experience the installation ahead of it opening to the public. This received some really positive feedback highlighting how the installation brought to life a lot of the work we’ve being talking about for a long time.

 

Q: How will you measure the impact?

We’ll measure the impact through metrics like media coverage, visits to our website and to the appeal page, donations to our appeal, social media engagement and also through the numbers of people who decide to set up a regular gift to give directly to the Myanmar appeal. For this campaign, we’re testing a new system allowing supporters to give to a specific part of the Red Cross.

Everyone is really excited about this installation, and a number of my colleagues across the UK want to take it on tour. Many of our corporate partners also want to have the installation in their offices to help staff engagement and were offering us different spaces for that. There’s so much appetite for it, and hopefully a real longevity to it!

Find out more about the British Red Cross Myanmar Appeal

 

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If your organisation is interested in becoming a member of IBT, please get in touch here.

How ActionAid UK is empowering female photographers in their latest campaign

Earlier this year, ActionAid UK launched ‘Women by Women’ an innovative year-long campaign that elevates the underrepresented stories and voices of women and girls. We spoke to Taahra Ghazi, Deputy Director of Communications at ActionAid UK to take a look behind the scenes of this unique campaign.

 

Q: How did you develop the idea for Women by Women?

For some time, ActionAid has been looking for ways to champion the empowering stories of women and girls and highlight the incredible talent of women photographers in Africa, Asia and Latin America – all of which are so often overlooked.

We wanted to ensure that our visual storytellers are as diverse as the communities we are representing and raise awareness of the everyday lives and experience of women and girls living in the global south – their positive energy, strength, courage and determination to break down barriers however small.

This is how we arrived at the idea of a meeting of two women – a subject and a photographer – to tell a story.

 

Q: Women by Women feels very timely, why do you think it is resonating so well in the current climate?

Women by Women is reflective of an increasingly loud conversation currently happening in the photographic community concerning the roles and talents of women photographers. After years of being overlooked, lens culture is starting to take note of the amazing women photographers all over the world and the perspective they can bring to a story.

It is also a remarkably positive project which lets the artists and subjects lead with personal, empathetic content which truly reflects their lives and perspectives. The impact this creates is authentic, beautiful and moving and people connect with this. We are showing daily realities and changing the way in which women are represented in the Global South, by giving them the platform to represent themselves.

Storytelling is vital to our global knowledge and to our understanding of our fellow humans. In today’s social media-enchanted, time-strapped culture, the power of imagery is never more relevant and the need for authentic, impactful stories never more compelling.

 

Q: This is an ambitious campaign, with lots of collaboration with external photographers. How have you found working with the artists? How did you find the right photographers to work with?

Being able to engage and work with women photographers from the global south has been both an eyeopener and an absolute privilege. To work with so many talented photographers who have voiced not only their enthusiasm for Women by Women but have gone on to be so inspired by the women subjects has been a joyous collaboration.

As you would expect, each photographer has a different creative style from the next and allowing this creativity to fully flow, without having to give the normal NGO type brief has been very liberating. The photographers have been found through the increasingly prominent network of women in photography that’s found on the internet, databases and information that lead you to a whole host of truly incredible and diverse female talent, as well as through our federation partners.

 

Q: How have you spread the word about the campaign, and how has it fed into your comms/media strategy? Have you found the media receptive to the story?

Our main channel for Women by Women has been Instagram as we really want to have these photos shared and engage new audiences. But we have also been pitching to main news outlets – the launch content by female photographers in Afghanistan featured in the Guardian, for example. Most outlets are very receptive to this content as it is bold, authentic and unique.

 

Q: What do you think has been most successful about the campaign so far?

We have seen very high engagement rates on Instagram. The ‘behind-the-scenes’ video footage which shows the photographers in action in Afghanistan has resonated and driven most of our traffic to the website. The images which are unexpected and really break down stereotypes have been the most successful. These include the images shot by Tahmina Saleem in Afghanistan showing women doing yoga in the snow in Kabul and a street artist who spray paints murals on walls that depict powerful women.

 

 

Q: What was the most challenging aspect of the campaign? What have you learned from the process?

Researching the stories of the women, ensuring that they can work visually and then getting the photographer on board – a photographer that we have never worked with and who is on another continent – is a lengthy process and requires both an enormous amount of work and trust for it all to come together successfully.

We have learned that there is a huge appetite for women to tell the stories of other women, that there is a real desire by the photographers to engage with their subjects and when those forces come together it produces some truly incredibly imagery.

 

Finally, how do you anticipate Women by Women evolving over the rest of the year? What do you hope to achieve with the campaign? What would success look like?

Initially this is a year-long project which will culminate in an exhibition of all the photographers’ work in the Spring of 2020. We hope to achieve recognition for the work of women photographers working in challenging environments in the global south, and the women and girls breaking down barriers, both big and small.

We also hope to engage more people in the work of ActionAid, so they can understand what it means to be a grassroots organisation that supports local women to support themselves. ActionAid is working for a world where the most vulnerable and forgotten women and girls can become valued and powerful. This means it is imperative that their voices are heard loud and clear across our communications.

Beyond the exhibition, we would love to see how different the world would look if all of our work across fundraising and communications were shot by women photographers and videographers living and working in the communities in the countries where they live. That would be groundbreaking.

Find out more about the campaign

 

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If your organisation is interested in becoming a member of IBT, please get in touch here.

The story behind the world’s first voice petition

Like all great stories, malaria is a tale of villains (the mosquitoes that carry the deadly parasite), heroes (from researchers to funders), tragedy (the billions of lives lost) and happy endings (knowing that we will defeat it).

 

We’ve seen tremendous progress, with seven million lives saved since 2000. But in November 2017 there was a major twist in the tale. Funding and political attention had dwindled causing progress to stall and risk being reversed. We needed to act, and fast. So in February 2018, David Beckham fronted the launch of Malaria Must Die, a global white label campaign that set out to reframe public perceptions of malaria and inspire political and private sector action.

The campaign laid the groundwork for the Malaria Summit held in April 2018 during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London when 53 leaders made a commitment to halve malaria by 2023. If delivered, this will save the lives of 650,000 people and protect 350 million more, mainly young children.

Cut to 2019 our aim is to sustain the campaign momentum and find an authentic way to unite a wide range of voices in a powerful way, to drive the conversation and demonstrate a strong, palpable demand for action. With this being the age of the voice, where smart speakers and voice recognition devices are becoming part of our everyday lives, Malaria Must Die is taking the humble petition into the 21^st century with the world’s first voice petition to end malaria.

We wanted to gather, hear and amplify the voices of those affected by malaria; those global household names who are part of the fight to end malaria; those on the front line; those at home who care; businesses who are helping lead the charge; leaders who have stepped up to the plate and micro-influencers.

The Malaria Must Die Voice Petition launched on 9^th April via a short film, produced by Ridley Scott Associates, where David Beckham appears to speak nine languages. But the voices are not all his own. Instead, using emerging AI video synthesis technology, we hear David speaking the voices of men and women from around the world, including malaria survivors.

The petition will capture a breadth of voices – geographically and across sectors. These collective voices will be packaged to create a malaria “roar” and used in a variety of ways, critically at a series of global and political moments in 2019 including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria replenishment in October where we want to grab the attention of leaders in a unique and memorable way.

 

 

Our media strategy for the campaign focused on online and broadcast coverage, ensuring that people saw the film and were directed to join the petition. We had complementary spokespeople, from the malaria survivors whose voices featured in the film, to Malaria No More UK supporters with powerful personal stories and experts who could speak about technical aspects of the disease. This enabled us to place opportunities over 18-hour period, from Sky Sunrise to evening radio. We have no advertising budget but thanks to our partnership with Dentsu Aegis Network we are fortunate to receive pro bono advertising and agency support.

As this was a global campaign we also worked with partners around the world to secure international coverage and saw online, print and broadcast coverage in key strategic markets including US, India, France, Nigeria and South Africa. A critical component of the communications strategy was social media and we were able to reach a large global audience thanks to the film and petition being promoted on David Beckham’s channels and those of other high-profile supporters and organisations. So far, the media coverage has created 44 million opportunities to see the campaign, with over 500 pieces of coverage, digital impressions have reached over 416 million, and video views are over 2.6 million. The campaign will continue to build with several moments planned in the next six months to inspire further sign ups for action.

Support the campaign

 

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This article has been written by Vicky Gashe, Head of Comms at Malaria No More UK