Business problem
The National Trust’s core audiences love places and think that protection of those places are important. BUT, they don’t necessarily act on this (financial, voice, time, support).

The consumer need
As a society feeling a great sense of anxiety (brought on by different things for different people), we are seeking ways to enhance our lives.

Solution
Drive behaviour by unlocking people’s care for place via brand storytelling, by helping them see (and participate) in the benefit they get from place.

Approach
We developed a campaign strategy that used real people’s stories to share and reinforce the impacts and benefits of place under the campaign line- 'These are the places that make us.'  Our campaign strategy provided a clear roadmap of how to communicate the brand purpose and manage brand participation over a period of 24 months.

We communicated the brand purpose through a brand activation campaign transforming the unspoken, invisible and intangible love of place into the visible and tangible via brand storytelling, executed through a series of raw, honest, documentary short films.
Working in partnership with the National Trust’s marketing teams at a national, regional and local level we sourced and selected member stories that clearly demonstrated an emotional connection with the places that mattered to them.

Our campaign story structure laid down the plan of how to release the first set of stories to expose the audience to the campaign line ‘These are the places that make us’. Subsequent stories then demonstrated and opened up brand participation at a national level via the  campaign hashtag  #PlacesMatter. This enabled the Trust to connect, engage and invite its audience and employees to participate through NT’s website and social channels. 

To reach the primary audience (27% of UK population) via paid, earned and owned channels, we briefed the Trust’s media and PR agencies on the campaign message hierarchy along with our recommended creative approach and channel approach. 

Once channel recommendations and budget were agreed upon by the client for each story burst, our in-house studio then produced all campaign assets to distribute across the three core channels of Radio, Cinema and Press.

Result

Milward Brown study found that the campaign’s consistent approach to brand storytelling over 12 months (line, look and feel, channel selection) led to improved effectiveness, memorability and brand recognition for the National Trust.