Charity campaigns can often come across as nothing but a route to raising funds but what if you focused on the story of your charity and the lives you have impacted? That is what CALM is doing. Fundraising Director at CALM, Emily Clayton, explains how focusing on the message of the charity and raising awareness for their cause has massively increased their donations – without having to ask for money! Their recent ‘Unseen Signals’ campaign uses a powerful message partnered with a public figure to explain their messaging and expand their brand’s reach.

Jason
Hello and welcome to the same landing page Episode 20. I’m Jason and I’m joined by my co-host Astra.

Astra
Hello.

Jason
We help charities apply for and manage advertising grants, and this works by bringing us closer to the challenges within the third sector and to help us and our audience understand it better and share the best practices. We like to record open conversations about the industry and the great work that people like our next guest is doing. So today we are talking to Emily Clayton, who is the fundraising director at CALM which is an acronym for Campaign Against Living Miserably.

CALM is a mental health charity responsible for the world’s first minister for suicide Prevention, and more recently, the “no signal for help should go unseen” campaign. With lioness and CALM ambassador Fran Kirby. Previous to her work at CALM Emily has years of experience across marketing, communications and senior fundraising roles for Cancer Research UK, Shelter and has worked agency side with a focus on the third sector.

Welcome to the show, Emily. I felt like I was a bit long-winded with my introduction there, but I hope that it encapsulated all of the things that you’ve covered. What we really want to get into to begin with is as part of ‘Spilling The Charitea’, as we call it, the work of the charity. Can you tell us a bit about CALM and the work you do?

Emily
Yeah, sure. So, CALM Is a suicide prevention charity and we therefore exist to prevent suicide. And we do that by offering life saving services and also thought provoking campaigns like the one that you mentioned and also tools and guides that can really help people start conversations when they might be suspecting that a friend or family member is potentially, you know, not feeling good or having suicidal thoughts.

So we specialise in working across kind of the whole continuum of mental health. So prevention right through to interventions we do really deal with kind of crisis and people who are feeling suicidal. And we do that by having a helpline that is run by paid professionals and equipped to take action and not just listen and find it’s open 365 days a year from 5 p.m. until midnight.

So my work within that is to lead the fundraising team to raise the funds that are needed to deliver those services and but also do that in a way that really helps supporters reject living miserably. So fundraising at CALM should be something that’s fun but also really impactful.

Jason
Also, yes, striking the balance between a serious subject, but making it something that engages people and is also positive is a difficult one, I guess. But in your in the new campaign, that kind of brings awareness to mental health for young women. And the campaign is entitled Unseen Signals and includes a video of lioness and CALM ambassador Fran Kirby, who gets physically injured during a football game and gets completely ignored, which is obviously it doesn’t normally happen in a game.

So the awareness that it brings there is to how underrepresented mental health is for women. And it’s obviously early days, But have you seen reaction to the campaign, Some feedback from the campaign?

Upwards of £80,000 in Google Ad Grants for Charities

Emily
Yeah. So and the campaign is, I guess, really one of the sort of services that we really provide. And one of the ways that we are trying to prevent suicide, it’s absolutely not there to be kind of a donations campaign or fundraising campaign. It is there to provide the awareness and the information that someone might need to recognise that someone is going through a difficult time.

And we do however, usually see halo effects on donations when we do put these kind of really big, thought provoking campaigns out there. We have had quite a few different things running at the same time, so it’s hard to say at the moment, you know exactly what uplifts in donations, for example, we might have seen from the campaign, it only came to an end last week because it’s obviously been run and in line with the Women’s World Cup.

So we haven’t had the full kind of a debrief on everything yet, but it’s certainly been well received and we’ve had loads and loads of comments and feedback and and it’s definitely I think that I mean the shocking stat in it is about the fastest rise of any group which is young women under 24 and having suicidal thoughts or taking their life.

So it’s definitely raised awareness of that like horrible stat. Really.

Astra
Yeah. I mean say like they often in especially in marketing we get told you know donate campaign, donate campaign, donate campaign. Drive all the donations but actually higher up the funnel if you like awareness and stuff is one of the most important ways that then impacts, you know, the lower down. And so it’s good to see that you guys have focused on all of them and not just the kind of bottom line.

Emily
Yeah and I think it’s a real challenge, especially when we know and the campaign like that will be, you know, having such great reach, to remain focussed and true to what the objective of that campaign is, which is, you know, raising awareness and helping people understand the signs and not to just bash a donate ask on the end of it. Me as Fundraising Director, has to be. But you know, is part of the services that we provide.

Astra
Yeah you you mentioned that about and the most significant rise being in young women. Can you just give an overview of the mental health landscape in the UK at the moment? Because I know it’s on the increase everywhere, but just to give people a taste of what what you guys are trying to campaign against essentially.

Emily
I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely not a pretty picture. And one in four people are struggling with their mental health and that means that the NHS are just too stretched to be able to support everyone that needs them. So it really does leave charities like us to be able to support and and we’re seeing that through a real increase in calls.

We’re having about a 95% increase in calls to our helpline since 2019. And the pandemic obviously had a huge impact on people’s mental health. And we saw a lot more calls then. But actually even since then, things like their cost of living crisis is is still having a huge impact on the demands that we’re seeing for our services.

And so we’re getting about 25,000 calls a month. And to put that into context. But, you know, the really scary thing behind it is that this is now a national emergency. Suicide is becoming more common and someone dies by suicide every 90 minutes and actually one in five people and will experience suicidal thoughts. And so it’s not as you know, I think that there’s so much stigma and there’s so much taboo around suicide.

But I think just thinking of it like that, that, you know, one in five people will will have this experience shows that it is, you know, a much bigger kind of mental health crisis than perhaps it’s first realised.

Astra
You know, you always remember the stats as well, don’t you. Is it one in three people are affected by cancer, which is something that, you know, most people know someone who’s had cancer or has cancer now. So for it to be one in five, it’s not that big of a jump is it? Are the phone calls volunteer run or is it like paid staff members?

Emily
Yeah. Yes. Yes. So our helpline is run by paid professionals and so they are able to intervene as well as to just kind of listen and to give advice. And they’re able to provide kind of really tangible action plans for people. So people should leave the calls, you know, with with a way forward. And that’s a real objective of ours.

Astra
Yeah, I think it’s super important to have, like you say, when you’re dealing with this kind of stuff and volunteers would be lovely, but you’ve just got to get people on the end of the phone as it’s such a sensitive subject.

Jason
Can you share a success story where your charity has made a real difference in someone’s life?

Emily
Say, you know, we make a real difference in people’s lives and all of the time. And we don’t perhaps capture and use as many stories of people who have been impacted by us as other charities and certainly other charities I’ve worked as well, largely because our helpline is confidential. So, you know, many people won’t want to talk about publicly what they have used our helpline for.

But we do have a lot of people who have been so impacted that they are willing to share their story and, you know, become kind of an ambassador for us and talk about the work that we do. And I guess one of the standout supporters that I’ve met in my time working at CALM is a guy who used our helpline he now does a huge amount of fundraising for us. And he’s even had a tattoo of the CALM logo on his arm.

Upwards of £80,000 in Google Ad Grants for Charities

Astra
Wow.

Jason
That’s nice. That just shows how much you’re touching people’s lives and making a difference. To support like all the work you do how do you keep the momentum going? Is there something unique fundraising events or campaigns that your charity is kind of taken part of or pioneered?

Emily
So yeah, I guess the growth of CALM and the fundraising and especially of CALM has been huge over the last five years. So, sort of, five, six years ago we were raising about one and a half million and in fundraising and now we’re more at this or six, six and a half million and bracket, which is really great, not as much as we need so would still like some more.

And that’s that that has really kind of changed the shape of the fundraising. And where are our income comes from over the years. Historically challenge events, London Marathon, that kind of thing was by far the biggest driver of income and particularly, you know, kind of in relation to what you said before, people who have been part of the kind of the CALM group in some way are so inspired to do something that taking on a big challenge has felt like a really tangible thing that they can do for us. Obviously, the pandemic stopped that and say we really had to look for different ways of fundraising. And actually that has now steered us into looking at way more different things and broadening out our portfolio to try and have a bit more of a, I guess a sustainable, reliable base of fundraising. We will obviously hope that something like that doesn’t happen again. But you know, it’s been a great reason to sort of pivot and look at things differently. We do still have a huge amount of our income coming from people doing events for us and taking part in something like that. And I think especially for suicide prevention and mental health charity, that sense of belonging in that sense of coming together in a group, is it just, you know, it marries so well in the kind of the values that we have as an organisation.

So I guess our newest event has been Snowden At Night which took place just in July. So, you know, it’s not a new thing, but it was new for CALM and to do a kind of stand alone event where anyone taking part was raising money for us and it went incredibly well. The weather was awful. But everyone still had an incredible time taking part. And I think the bit that really stood out for me is and we had a large group from one of our corporate partners taking part and we were lucky enough to be shared the email that the kind of MD sent afterwards to everyone that took part and the way he talked about the experience of that night of walking together with the connections made is is exactly what we want fundraising to be like for CALM is not just about the raising the money. It was the fact that, you know, these people will have an experience that they will never forget having done that together. So yeah, that’s been a real kind of highlight in the event space for me.

Astra
Yeah, in some ways the bad weather is probably better because I think I would donate more knowing someone’s had to slug it up a mountain in horrendous weather than if they got, you know, glorious sunshine.

Emily
Horrendous weather at night

Astra
Yeah exactly, so sometimes the weather is on your side, isn’t it.

Emily
Yeah, from the fundraising point of view yeah

Astra
What would you say has been the most successful fundraiser that you’ve ever been a part of, whether it’s at CALM or somewhere else?

Emily
The one that springs to mind, and I’ve talked about this quite a lot recently actually is Jingle Jam. So Jingle Jam is the world’s biggest charity gaming event, and we were fortunate enough to be one of the charity’s beneficiaries of it last year. So it takes place for two weeks and over the Christmas period was at the beginning of December. And I mean, it was it for me, it was the first time having quite a large scale, you know, fundraising coming from the kind of gaming and streaming space. It’s something that all the charities I’ve worked in, we’ve tried to get into, but it hasn’t quite connected. Certainly to the levels of this. And we had a moment when it launched. So and the people who were kind of waiting for it to launch are there because they basically sell a kind of collection of games that are only able to buy by being part of Jingle Jam. So when it launches, everyone is ready to go and to start making their donations for those games. We had the whole of our charity I mean, we’re only small anyway, but we were all in all around the telly pressing refresh, literally watching this number go up and up and up and it was going up by tens of thousands within minutes. So yeah, it was phenomenal to be able to stand there and see that money come in, but also to see the reaction of the streamers and all of the people at Jingle Jam who were doing that was brilliant.

Jason
That’s Awesome! Are these board games or computer games?

Emily
Computer games, but streaming lots of So there would be people who are streaming themselves, playing board games and things like that as well.

Jason
Wow. That’s really fun I mean, did that bring in like a different kind of audience to some of the typical stuff you do?

Emily
I think for CALM , not as much. So one of the reasons that we kind of applied to be part of it and had a successful time doing it is we do have quite a especially for charity. We do have quite a young audience and a male skewed audience as well. So for us it really played into what our supporters are doing and we would therefore able to be just right, quite authentic in that space. But for a lot of the other charities and certainly, you know, places I’ve worked before, you know, it’s not the audience. So I’m sure it would have opened up a new audience for the other charities involved.

Jason
Right. So you were strategic you knew where your audience were and then you’ve gone there rather than picking up, trying to afford. Now that’s really, really effective and a good story to share, if you would, to think generally, what do you think the charity space needs? In terms of fundraising to improve, what could be better in general, If you could change one thing, what would it be?

Emily
So I don’t know whether I should be saying it, but I’m going to. For me it would be more collaboration and across charities. And by that I mean, so this is you know, this is my kind of my passion point in fundraising any way I come and kind of event, that was my my first role within the charity space. And I just love events I love I can do for people. I love the you know, seeing people come together. And I think especially working at events, I don’t think there’s any greater joy for a marketer or fundraiser than seeing someone kind of cross that finish line and seeing the achievement on their face as well as the money they’ve raised. I love that space. So and, you know, there’s so many events now is quite saturated in the charity market. But then when you still see the 40,000 people running the London Marathon every year, that’s where someone gets the best experience because they’re part of this incredible big event. And, you know, the fund raising follows that as well. And I don’t think any one charity is going to be able to replicate anything like that in many different ways.

So, yeah, for me, it would be more collaboration so that as a group of charities, you can bring together lots more people to do something really impactful. And without putting the I guess again, one of the reasons I love fundraising and working in charities, is understanding the kind of human motivation around why people do the things that they do.

And and we’re now in that funnel by saying we want you to do this thing at this time for just this one cause or this one charity. So being able to open that up and the power of bringing so many different things together I think would be a really good move in the fundraising space, then that might be an event or it might be, you know, I think about the original Live Aid, there’s been nothing like that since and that sense of everyone wants to be part of it and everyone wants to remember where they were when they watched it or did it or whatever it was.I think that would be amazing to do.

Upwards of £80,000 in Google Ad Grants for Charities

Astra
So what is what is your you just kind of touched on it a little bit there, but what does motivate people to donate to CALM or get involved with CALM and you said it’s male skewed and quite young .

Emily
Yeah so at the moment motivation is is largely because you know people who are donating to CALM at the moment, the majority do know who CALM is, what we do and in some way have been impacted by our work either because of their you know connection and they might be bereaved and they might have used our services. But we do have a really kind of loyal, dedicated supporter base of people who want to continue to support CALM . We are trying to grow that. And actually we had and so last year we were lucky enough to be one of the beneficiaries of the Time’s Christmas appeal, and that did open a completely new audience to us and an audience that we were and we weren’t sure what our tone of voice and what our brand, you know, how that would resonate with a very different audience to ours. But seeing some of the, you know, comments and the feedback from donations that we got, it’s it’s really kind of opened up a new opportunity there. And we also doing some other things in that space. Now. And it just raised for me, it certainly opened my eyes up to and some people will just donate because they will read a really powerful story and even if they’re not that close to the actual cause themselves. Again, it comes back to that the human nature of, you know, you’re having about this tough time and therefore you want to do something about it.

Jason
Yeah, you should. I mean, all of any of our listeners should go on the website and look, it’s is really cool. I love your branding and the way that you’ve laid out that information and balanced what is such a tough subject where you kind of I don’t know. It’s just the way that you’ve all the information and kept it about activities and fun things as well.

And it really doesn’t lose sight of the focus, but also keeps a balance. And I think it’s a really difficult to do that. So yeah, it’s commendable. Well, obviously so the website in the show notes what some of the audience might be earlier along in their career than you are, but with views to become a fundraising director or they just want to find a way to get more money for the charity and desperate to find out what the secret is to doing that. What kind of skills do you need to have to be a good fundraising director?

Emily
Again, I think I’ve mentioned it a couple of times, but I think to me it’s that it is having an interest in human behaviour and what will make and what that barriers might be to that as well. So and that obviously plays heavily into marketing. So I do think having, you know, a good understanding of marketing, I don’t think the two things can work without each other. And so a good understanding of marketing and understanding of marketing to be able to ensure a real clear message of why people should do something. And that comes from that sort of understanding human behaviour. Then on top of that leadership, prioritisation and planning, I think, especially coming from a relatively small charity at the moment, there are so many things that we can be doing. There’s so many opportunities even within fundraising, and that for various reasons we just can’t do all of them at the same time or you know, in a year, whatever that might be. So being able to really kind of prioritise and stay true to that and not get tempted by the new big shiny thing that’s coming in. Sort of sticking to a plan within reason and it’s been something that I’ve definitely had to get better at since becoming a Fundraising Director

Astra
I think this is a traditionally in marketing and I think one of the first things I was told about branding marketing is if you want someone to part with money, you should be happy and inspiring and sort of the emotions that you provoke, but obviously quite difficult to do that when you’re talking about mental health, depression and suicide. How do you kind of bridge that gap?

Emily
Yeah, it is difficult and actually it’s quite a new thing for us at CALM to be going out with a really kind of and so low donation focussed ask and you know, for lots of different reasons but am largely about how that sits within our brand. I think, you know, generally we don’t want to shy away from talking about suicide and so much of the work that we do is about encouraging people to have the right conversation, to not fear talking about suicide and to be able to, you know, help other people open up and have the right conversations as well.

So we definitely don’t want to play that down. But we also do and shout about life. We talk about survival and we talk about reasons to stay. And and I think a lot of what we do in fundraising plays into that really well. You can see it in our cheer points. For example, if you’re running for CALM at one of the big events, our cheer points are rowdy, riotous.

We, you know, we absolutely make everyone feel like a complete hero when they they go past us. So the reasons they might be doing that could be, you know, really sad and that could be the motivator. But we still want to make them feel really good for doing it. And when they when they when asked when they do something for us and I think, you know, just generally knowing where money goes.

So sometimes we do use the the sadder side to be able to talk about and why we need people to donate to us. Often we talk about the the need to kind of the help line and the demand for that. So we don’t need to go too heavily into and into that, I guess some of the sadder of things.

But but yeah, I think I think generally there’s there’s the balance that you know, that you talked about earlier as well. We definitely don’t want to shy away from it, our brand and our tone of voices is really bold and that this fundraising can be the uplifting part of it.

Astra
Yeah, I like that.

Upwards of £80,000 in Google Ad Grants for Charities

Jason
Emily, you’ve obviously, as we’ve said, worked across Cancer Research UK and Shelter, lots of different campaigns under your belt. What makes a good fundraising campaign work, what needs to be in place for it to work?

Emily
I think a simple well-understood message and also a really clear call to action of, you know, this is why we need your money. This is you know, this is the problem, this is the solution. And if you give us your money, you’re going to help us do that. I think that’s that’s the kind if you can’t, I always come back to again, especially thinking in the event space, if you’re going to run the marathon and you want someone to sponsor you, if you can’t explain in a sentence why someone to sponsor you for doing that event, for that cause, then then it’s probably a bit overcomplicated and that’s the kind of language that we need to be putting into our into our kind of fundraising campaigns as well. And then there’s also storytelling, especially where there is the ability to do that. And I talked about it a few times, but I think, you know, that’s where you can get that human connection and and, and people can just understand why. And so I think the storytelling throughout is really important.

Jason
Yeah, definitely. You touched on it a bit there as well in focusing on why it’s important, you can it’s so easy to talk about all the things you’re proud of, all of the work you’re doing, but consolidating that to one message, one call to action and one thing. It’s really difficult for a lot of stakeholders to do because this idea that what about we’re missing out on this stuff, but this stuff that you lose?

Oh, if you don’t get it into one concise message. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing your experience at CALM and also you just your experience in general. Now we’re going to test it in statistics. And so Holly James who edits the podcast has put together this segment and Astra is going to host.

Astra
I am.

Jason
So to talk us through how the game works.

Astra
Okay. So Jason keeps calling it suspicious statistics, but just not to add any confusion on the presentation is called Fake Facts. So same game, different names there are three facts which we will present to you and one of them is fake. Jason also will be playing along. And between the two of you, you kind of figure out which one it is.

Then I will share my screen. No peeping and present, section 2.

So first up,

1. 25 million people are thought to live with anxiety related conditions worldwide.
2. Reports of anxiety reduced by 1.7% from 2021 to 2022 or in 2020/23.
3. An average of 37.1% of women and 29.9% of men reported high levels of anxiety.

That was a tongue twister. Which one is the fake fact?

Jason
I think the second one I would say I’d be surprised if anxiety reduced. I can’t think why, but I suppose what’s improved in the world is I don’t know. What do you think, Emily?

Emily
I agree. I think it’s the second one and the first one partly, and I’m not very good at quantifying. I don’t know whether 25 million people is it worldwide? Is it is high or low. But yeah I mean I agree, I can imagine and certainly we don’t see any information that would suggest the anxiety levels are reducing or have reduced in that time. So I think that would be the one for me.

Astra
Hey, we’re both agreed. The fake one is number one it’s 250 million. So turns out 25 million is quite small globally.

Jason
So good news for 2022.

Astra
Yeah. My thinking is did they reduce because in 2021 to 2022 it was that little window of no lockdowns for quite a while. So maybe that was I mean, that’s still a relatively small reduction, but maybe that was responsible people were like, “yay outdoors, can’t wait”

Jason
A good summer does a lot for us

Astra
Yeah, Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, we’ll get you back on in a year Emily and see what it says 2022-2023.

So next up,

1. Globally 5% of adults suffer from depression
2. More than 10% of pregnant women and women who have just given birth experienced depression or
3. 25% of suicides in women under 25 had previously been assessed as a low risk.

Emily
I mean, none of them are great are they

Astra
Yeah, we never really fill this segment with good stats. We we should try in the spirit of fundraising and around sad things, we’ll try for the next episode maybe.

Emily
My thoughts are that the first one might be fake. I think it’s probably higher than 5%.

Jason
Yeah, I agree.

Astra
Yeah.

Jason
I’m going to get to say the same again. I think it’s higher.

Astra
Jason has a habit of just copying the guest. So if you win Emily so does he.

The answer is 25% of suicides in women under 25 had previously been assessed as low risk. It was actually 79%. Which I think just shines a light on why the latest campaign is needed. You know, if these signals are going unheard in women.

Jason
So what this is all about, that’s part of the conversation in our office about about the subject, about how often. Well maybe you’re better placed to talk about this.

Astra
Yeah. We were just talking about medical bias and how often when women go to the doctors and they’re of childbearing age that it’s like, oh, it’s just your hormones or your period is probably coming, you know. A lot of complaints don’t get taken as seriously as they should be. And I think there’s a lot of there’s a lot of campaigning going on right now around that. And hopefully that will change because 79% of women being assessed as low risk is not on, at all.

Emily
It is not good.

Astra
On to the men.

1. 84 men die by suicide each week in the UK
2. 10% of men won’t talk about their mental health with friends or family
3. Men are now almost three times more likely to see a therapist if they’re worried compared to 2009.

Astra
What do we think?

Jason
At least this one positive. And now I think the last one is true. It seems in the right vein. I’m just speaking first because I’ll get accused of plagiarism. This the first one, I think that was your campaign. Your last campaign. I’m just hoping I don’t remember if it was week or month, but I think it’s correct. So I think 10% is the is the fake fact I think is higher than that number.

Emily
Yeah, I agree.

Astra
Same on that one. The fake fact was 10% of men won’t talk about their mental health. It’s actually 40%. I can’t believe I said 84% of men die by suicide, we’d probably have noticed that a bit more if it was 84% every week. So apologies for my blunder there guys, I think that might be the last one and we may be tied.

Jason
It was one point it.

Upwards of £80,000 in Google Ad Grants for Charities

Astra
Is I think yeah collectively you’re all on two and so that’s the end of segment two. Jason I will pass over to you for the third and final segment.

Jason
Yeah, sure. So it’s always nice at the end to just kind of summarise what we’ve covered and this is the part that absolutely terrifies me where we are going to do. We’re going to produce a random word and try and link everything we’ve covered back to that word, and I’m just googling for a random word and actually I can bring this up so you can see that it is random because I had someone asked me whether any of this stuff was random or if we prepared it, because the last word we used was a very, very fitting, passion yeah. But we’re not going to go battlefield because that was already there loaded. We’re going to generate and it’s express

Astra
Let’s see, this one is quite fitting as well. Um, Emily I think we’ll let you go. We’ll let you go first on this one.

Emily
I agree this should be coming more easily to me and I think express for me shows how important it is for an organisation a charity like CALM to help people with the right tools and the right language so that they can express their feelings and keep them on the prevention side of the continuum we talked about.

Astra
Yeah, I think so, just to build on that, you know, if more people were able to express how they felt and express particularly those statistics there around men or when women’s expressions are taken a bit more seriously by medical professionals, for example, then we will see some of those stats start to move in the right direction and hopefully with work of CALM , etc. as well Helping with that, I’m sure. So Jason, final words, your favourite?

Jason
I try and use a different words, a different meaning of the words. I’ll give you the express in this terms of like speed and so I think it was really interesting, Emily said about what she would change about the kind of the charity sector and about how so many people do the same thing when it comes to like the marathon and things like that. And I think maybe this is a quick the quick answer isn’t always the best answer. The quick answer is, well, we need to do that. Because everyone else does that or, because everyone else says that, as Emily said, why don’t we all work together? And instead of doing that first hundred metres on our own and making the same mistakes that everyone else made, we could learn from each other and maybe push together in the right direction and save everyone can save a lot more resource that way. I thought that was really a really good point. So it’s a bit of a tenuous one that links to express there. Yeah, that was, that was a really good point. So I like that.

Astra
Well I think that that’s yeah, that’s a really nice summary.

Jason
So towards the end, Emily, we would like to ask as well, is there somebody else in the charity space that you would like to shed some light on or shout out because of the work they do and you talk us through who they are and what kind of work they’re doing.

Emily
So in terms of a kind of a charity brand and the one that comes to mind that I really admire at the moment is Choose Love. And I think they have done just such a phenomenal job, obviously, that, you know, the cause that they represent and the work that they do with refugees is incredible and the way they’ve built their brand and being able to create merchandise that people see as a fashion item and want to buy, I just think is incredible. They you know, they’ve had that they’ve found a really great way to use their ambassadors, their talent, their, you know, their famous supporters. Wear a t-shirt take a picture, such a simple thing that, yeah, the fundraising I don’t know what the numbers are, but the fundraising that I mean, they’re doing off the back of that is, is brilliant. And I think they’ve done such a good job that you know that the words “Choose Love” don’t immediately describe what they do, but it’s so engaging. I think anyone wants to then find out which again is just a great strategy for them.

Astra
Yeah, I mean, they used to be called like Help Refugees, right? Which is exactly what they do. And by actually stepping away from what they do, they’ve managed to. That’s very clever. Very clever.

Jason
And brave as well, lots of marketers would tell you not to do that for so many reasons. And it turns out that they made the new brand really work for them.

Emily
Yeah.

Jason
Nice. Awesome, thank you so much Emily for joining us and it’s been a really, really fun episode and we’ll link to the website and the no signal for help should go unseen campaign of course in the show notes and yeah thank you so much for coming on.

Emily
Thank you very much. Great talking to you both. Thank you.

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