charity & public sector
Director of campaigns and marketing, Department for International Trade (for work on the GREAT Britain campaign)
Conrad Bird
Maintaining Britain’s image abroad in an era of Brexit is a Herculean task, but Conrad Bird and his team still keep the country top of consideration for investors and educators. He created what experts suggest was the Government’s most successful international campaign to date. As a result, Bird believes international perception of the UK remains strong, adding it is the world’s number two destination for international students and the top destination for foreign direct investment in Europe. Government figures suggest a £4bn benefit to the UK economy from the campaign over the past seven years.
Bird was also behind the launch of the City Nation Place UK conference, designed to bring together the UK’s key executives in city branding to share their insights on boosting their brand perceptions and the international perception of Brand Britain. The success of the campaign saw Bird take on a new role as director of campaigns and marketing at the Department for International Trade this year.
Sophie Castell
Director of relationships, RNIB
Sophie Castell has spearheaded a brand turnaround that still focuses on fundraising but now pushes for a change in public perception of disability. When she joined in 2017, RNIB was seeing a significant dip in donations. Reshaping how the charity has approached its work meant it ended the 2017/28 financial year with an operating surplus of £6.3m versus a deficit of £12.6m the year before, while donations were up 4.5% at £32.3m.
Castell’s approach to refreshing the RNIB brand has been to give it more of a sense of humour, be less po-faced about the issue of sight loss and to see beyond the condition to the person. It introduced marketing lines such as: ‘Glaucoma didn’t stop me going to the gym. The bar on the way did’, while also using fonts and colourways that make it easier for those with impaired sight to see them. She has also reset the business strategy, encouraging both the charity and its supporters to ‘See Differently’, while integrating the marketing, fundraising and customer engagement teams.
Carolan Davidge
Executive director, marketing and engagement,
British Heart Foundation
Carolan Davidge joined the British Heart Foundation (BHF) in 2014 to lead its brand, marketing, communications, digital engagement and customer teams. She is passionate about the role charities can play to change society for the better and focused on involving people in BHF’s life-changing work. Shortly after she joined, BHF launched its ‘We fight for every heartbeat’ strategy, with the aim of telling the stories behind its successful research to more closely link its work with people’s contributions.
Davidge has not shied away from controversy, with 2016’s ‘Heart disease is heartless’ ads causing contention for their distressing nature. More recently, ‘Boy’ showed the experience of a young boy and why the heart is so fundamental to people’s health. It also has a partnership with Tesco – ‘Little helps for healthier living’ – that aims to persuade people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Donations reached £126.6m in 2018, up 10.5%, while BHF is on track to raise the money to fund £500m in life-saving research between 2015 and 2020.
Vivienne Francis
Consultant (for work at Alzheimer’s Society)
As director of marketing and external affairs, Vivienne Francis led an overhaul at Alzheimer’s Society that put the brand front and centre of a new strategy to unite people against dementia.
Francis joined Alzheimer’s Society in 2015 with a remit to develop and unify its brand so the charity has a higher profile, better engagement with audiences and increased influence on policy and legislation. In 2017, it launched a renewed brand and strapline, ‘United Against Dementia’, aimed at providing a rallying point for the dementia movement. She has also been a leader on policy and legislation efforts, of particular importance as the issue of funding social care moves up the Government’s agenda. Its relaunched brand and marketing campaign helped Alzheimer’s Society income increase by 3.1% last year to £106.9m, with fundraising up 11% to almost £77m.
Ben Hawley
Marketing director, CALM
Ben Hawley has raised the profile of male mental health charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) through a series of eye-catching marketing executions. On LinkedIn, he describes his role as “shouting loudly” about the work of the charity, and his work has certainly done that. Headline-grabbing campaigns have included a startling installation on top of ITV’s London headquarters, which used 84 statues to represent the 84 men who take their own lives every week in the UK. The ad director responsible referred to his client’s “bravery, audacity and vision”.
Hawley has also turned outdoor billboards into giant phone screens that were connected live to CALM’s helpline and mirrored the incoming calls in real time, showing how many people were opening up and being supported by CALM each day. The campaigns have had real impact, helping raise awareness of the issue. CALM’s statue campaign generated the biggest Google search figures around suicide in history, three times bigger than anything before on zero media budget. It also preceded then prime minister, Theresa May, appointing a minister for suicide prevention.
Alison Jeremy
Director of marketing and communications, NSPCC
Alison Jeremy has 20 years’ experience working across communications, marketing and digital, and is a strong advocate for ensuring young people’s voices are heard. She is a digital maven when it comes to getting the NSPCC’s message across as she believes it plays an important role in encouraging engagement with the charity. The NSPCC used Amazon Alexa as the vehicle for the ‘Parents vs Kids’ quiz, for example, in order to trigger family conversations around internet safety and the digital world. Having celebrities such as Stacey Solomon on board with the initiative also helped drive public awareness of the campaign.
When it comes to raising both funds and awareness of children’s issues, though, it is the charity’s longstanding partnerships with high-profile brands such as O2 and Harrods that keep it in the news and ensure people continue to donate. The charity is responsible for several initiatives that raise awareness of and support children’s wellbeing. One recent addition has been a new service called Positive Pathways, which helps children and young people deal with their problems.
Chris Macleod
Director of customer and revenue, Transport for London
Marketing Transport for London (TfL) is something of a juggling act for Chris Macleod given the government organisation is part logistics network, part publisher and part events space. Over the past couple of years, TfL has modernised its advertising estate allowing for some truly creative work, which generated £150m for the organisation last year, £10m more than the previous 12 months.
One example of this is a link-up with Time Out, which saw TfL try to convince more travellers to take off-peak journeys. It included an interactive cultural map of London with more than 300 stations, featuring regularly updated Time Out recommendations as well as digital feature packages and digital display takeovers. Macleod has also been working with the Mayor of London to help TfL walk the tricky tightrope between showing ads that generate revenue, while ensuring any that might offend commuters are refused. As part of this drive, TfL has also been looking to tackle gender inequality, running the Women We See competition to improve gender diversity in advertising.
Sheila Mitchell
Marketing director, Public Health England
With rising rates of preventable illnesses such as obesity and type 2 diabetes confronting a struggling NHS, Sheila Mitchell is tasked with finding ways to help the public make changes that are both acceptable and effective. She was behind the launch of the Change4Life campaign back in 2009, and has continued to breathe new life into it over the past decade, meaning awareness among mothers of young children is now higher than 90%. The campaign has also been a driving force behind major changes to legislation, such as the introduction of the sugar tax in 2018.
More recently, Mitchell launched the Government’s ‘Year of Marketing’ drive to raise communications standards across all internal departments by 2020. She co-authored a manifesto to support the campaign, which identifies six areas where its marketers need to address change. Mitchell was made a CBE in January’s New Year’s Honours for services to public health, including healthy eating and smoking cessation.
Nick Terry
Marketing director, Capita (British Army)
Nick Terry’s approach to bringing in recruits might have been controversial, but it certainly grabbed people’s attention. Referring to people as ‘me me me millennials’, ‘snowflakes’ and ‘phone zombies’, the British Army’s latest ad campaign challenged perceived weaknesses and provoked discussion. Rather than being an insult, though, the campaign highlighted how the Army could use people with the ‘compassion’ of snowflakes, ‘stamina’ of gamers and ‘confidence’ of selfie addicts.
Since launching the wider ‘This is belonging’ campaign, the Army has seen a sustained uplift in website visits and applications. Interest in wanting to join the Army among its target audience is also at its highest point over the past four years, and an additional 1,000 soldiers started basic training in the first three months of 2019 compared with 2018. The ‘Snowflake’ ads have also inspired the US Army’s recruitment approach and it is now in talks with its UK counterpart to see how it can better appeal to potential recruits. Meanwhile, the ‘This is belonging’ campaign was a Gold winner at the 2018 IPA Effectiveness Awards.
Paul Twocock
Interim CEO, Stonewall
Despite making significant progress, Paul Twocock knows there is still a long way to go to level the playing field for LGBTQ+ rights. As well as championing mainstream awareness, he has been instrumental in shining a light on some of the lesser known impacts of LGBTQ+ discrimination. This has included promoting mandatory LGBTQ+ training for carers and inclusive Father’s Day cards. Using Amazon Alexa, the charity has also developed a skill that shares people’s LGBTQ+ stories and tells users how they can lend support.
With sport a notoriously difficult environment to be open about sexuality, and homophobia still present on match days, Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign began to show gay players they had allies in sport. In 2018, it won Campaign of the Year at the BT Sport Industry Awards. Stonewall is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and although it has achieved much over the past three decades, the charity is redoubling its efforts in the face of a sharp rise in trans hate crime and slurs against the LGBTQ+ community.
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