PR Case Study: 50 Things To Do Before You’re 11¾
When the National Trust wanted to send a rallying cry to the kids of the UK this summer to “start a lifelong love affair with the great outdoors”, Mischief built on the trust’s existing ‘50 Things To Do Before You’re 11 ¾’ campaign by enlisting the help of Game of Thrones star and musician Raleigh Ritchie to pen an exclusive rap to champion the entertainment value and endless imaginative possibilities of the humble stick…
Campaign: 50 Things To Do Before You’re 11 ¾
Client: National Trust
PR Team: Mischief PR
Timing: July – August 2016
Objectives:
Ultimately, the aim of the campaign was threefold:
- Increase awareness of the National Trust’s ’50 Things’ offering, achieving reach primarily through PR coverage.
- Educate our target audience of ‘explorer families’ as to the importance of children forming a connection with nature, and promote a deeper understanding and awareness of the wider environmental issues.
- Drive participation.
Strategy
The challenge began with addressing how we could get “digital natives” to start a lifelong love affair with the great outdoors, especially via a pre-existing, five-year-old campaign – ‘50 Things To Do Before You’re 11 ¾’.
We needed to send a rallying cry to the kids of the UK to get involved in an icky, sticky, muddy relationship with nature, but we needed to reach them via a platform that they respect and take notice of (and not lose parental approval in the process!).
The strategic solution? ‘Start your Story’. A platform through which we could help children to start their own lifelong story and relationship with nature via ‘50 Things’.
‘50 Things’ isn’t just a list, after all – it’s a vehicle which kids and families can use to create cherished memories together. If we start children’s stories with nature now, they will create a lifelong connection that they’ll pass on to their own children and future generations.
The idea
We needed to find a fresh way to earn attention and inspire a new cohort of families to pick up the ‘50 Things’ baton.
In 2016, that baton came in the form of the humble stick – an item that heavily features in many ’50 Things’ activities and the outdoor element parents cited as the best tool for inspiring imaginative, creative, outdoor play.
We partnered with Game of Thrones star and musician Raleigh Ritchie to create a spoken word piece championing a stick’s endless possibilities for imaginative outdoor play. This content was supported by inter-generational research and expert opinion, all encouraging kids to start their story with nature.
Raleigh Ritchie launches The National Trust’s ultimate list of 50 things for children to do before they turn 11 3/4
Results
- Created with sharing in mind, the content became the National Trust’s most viewed organic film on Twitter to date and clocked more than a million organic Facebook views.
- Media loved the lo-fi creative for a hi-tech audience. Broadcasters including BBC Breakfast, Newsround, 5News and Sky Sunrise ran the story multiple times.
- Additional earned news and features appeared in titles including the Guardian, MailOnline, i, Express Online, The Sun, Metro, London Evening Standard and The Telegraph.
- Superseded coverage KPIs by 60%
- Downloads of the ’50 Things’ app quadrupled following the campaign launch, and views of the hub page increased by 52%
Got a cracking campaign – with impressive results – that you’d like to showcase? If so, please email richard.odonnell@gorkana.com.
