Best Topical Campaign

Winter is a tough month for both the elderly trying to battle with the cold weather and

for Age UK trying to get cut through in a cluttered market. We needed to launch the

Spread the Warmth campaign to highlight how the cold can affect the elderly and

how Age UK’s services can help. The solution was to cover wrap the Daily Telegraph

Magazine using heat sensitive thermal ink to engage readers and encourage

donations at a time when the cold weather is most relevant. This cover wrap

increased awareness and led to their most successful donation drive ever.

Background and objectives

Every winter 200 people die each day from the cold, a large proportion of these deaths are older people and the majority believed to be preventable. These figures are published each year around the 20th November and generate a lot of outrage from the general public. Our aim in November 2012 was to launch the Age UK Spread the Warmth campaign at a time when the cold is relevant and at a date close to the publishing of these results. Our objective for this campaign was to increase awareness that these preventable deaths are happening and ultimately reduce this number.

Older people struggle over the winter and often do not realise they are in danger. They are not aware there are various benefits they may be entitled to, to get them through the cold months in more comfort. This is a service Age UK offer, advising and supporting elderly people on how they can get help. We needed to raise awareness that this service existed.

We further needed to make the dangers of the cold a reality and relevant to older people- who are the most vulnerable at Winter- beat the cold and spread the warmth. We also needed to engage a fundraising audience to encourage donations to help reduce these 200 preventable deaths.

Insight and strategy

The end of the year is a key time for Age UK when they need to address the public and highlight how the cold can affect older people. However Age UK struggles to gain cut through and share of voice around the Christmas period due to a highly cluttered marketplace. There is a strong presence from other charities and a large number of retail advertising making the issue of age a low interest topic. Our insight was that those who have been directly touched by this topic were most engaged and so we needed to physically connect people with the issues, highlight the dangers of the cold and extend the engagement with Age UK and the services they offer.

The cold is an invisible enemy, one you can’t see but can feel. We needed to touch people on an emotional level, get them to feel what it’s like as a vulnerable older person in winter. We know that encoding ad messaging with one of the sense’s (sight, sound, smell, touch) creates stronger longer lasting emotional connection. This led us to the idea; make consumers feel the cold through the language of touch. November is a very cold month and so inviting consumers to engage at a time when the weather is most relevant again extends the emotional engagement with both the older and fundraising audience. We needed to highlight the plight of the elderly in the

cold and show what Age UK’s money can do. So with the help of Telegraph Media Group, creative agency; Karmarama this idea was put into action.

The plan

A high impact UK media first was created on 17th November 2012 in the form of a 4 page thermal cover wrap on the Telegraph Saturday Magazine. This was only the second ever time the magazine had been wrapped and demonstrates massive innovation in the print market through the use of heat sensitive ink.

The front cover featured a stereotypical living room, with Age UK ambassador Lynda Bellingham and a selection of items, which represented home comforts vulnerable older people lacked during the winter months. This highlighted a service Age UK provides- things we take for granted e.g. a warm fire, hot food. We greyed these items out with heat sensitive ink and invited privileged affluent readers to use their warmth of touch to reveal what lay beneath. This brought the cover to life, changing the grey to a warm orange and revealed the many ways Age UK can help older people survive the cold, at a time when the dropping temperature is most relevant. This peaked readers curiosity and led them to engage with the content, understand the relevance of the items, all explained within the inside front cover.

The wrap acted as a launch pad for the remainder of the fundraising activity that ran across press and train card panels. The wrap’s further aim was to drive talkability, with phenomenal results. It gave the PR team a unique reason to bring the subject of aging to Westminster (a longer term organizational goal) with Jim Cunningham tabling a question to Secretary of State for health in the House of Commons, with the DoH actively contacted Age UK for advice.

Results

The wrap led to 910,000 pairs of Telegraph reader’s hands to reach into their pockets and donate. The OBC appeal for consumers to donate their coats led to 13,000 coats being donated, which was a +62% increase on the number of coats donated in 2011. These coats generated a potential of £131,000 worth of potential income for Age UK.

The wrap increased awareness of Age UK and the work it does with the organization’s profile raised at significant time of year for the elderly. Interest in understanding aging reached an all-time high with 50,000 information packs downloaded from the website (+52% YoY increase). Online donations have always been low but we were up 625% reaching a younger audience which Age UK has always struggled to appeal to.

It was a risky tactic investing £30k, for a client whose budgets are limited but the ROI and brand engagement delivered far outweighed the media spend and helped deliver the most successful donations drive ever.

Client view

‘I am absolutely thrilled to have been involved in the Daily Telegraph magazine

coverwrap. This was a very exciting piece of material as Age UK Spread the Warmth

campaign is the biggest fundraising campaign throughout the entire year. It touches

every single part of our business and it is very important to us. Having a piece of

collateral like this to launch the campaign is very exciting. The heat sensitive thermo

ink had a fantastic response from everyone internally.’