Accelerating social change

Our Work

We work with pioneering organisations and individuals to deliver tangible social change.

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Neighbourly

We started work with community engagement platform Neighbourly and their national business partners including Marks and Spencer, Aldi, Lidl and Danone during the Covid-19 pandemic. We helped them raise awareness of the emergency support available and increase partner involvement, ultimately enabling their UK network of local causes to help over 4 million vulnerable people.

Since then we have continued to work with Neighbourly on a retained basis, building their voice and supporting growth of their business, their charity network and their positive impact.

We provided emergency PR support around the launch of a £1million community fund, encouraging wider business contributions for communities most affected by coronavirus.

This generated immediate media profile, enhancing Neighbourly’s reach at a critical time.

Subsequently we have built an ongoing thought leadership programme, with Neighbourly and its partners. Our work has included news announcements, opinion piece writing and placement, letters to the editors, and social media amplification.

We have helped Neighbourly respond to Danny Kruger’s call for evidence around how to level up our communities and get involved in the APPG for Left Behind Neighbourhoods.

More broadly, we are building partnerships with relevant organisations who, like Neighbourly, recognise the importance of hyper-local charities and community groups.

Patagonia

We work with Patagonia to highlight their sustainability ambitions among UK audiences.

Our work includes driving grassroots action with environmental partners and translating global to local, to build Patagonia’s profile as one of the leading business voices on climate action.

We created and executed UK media launch for their new online platform, Patagonia Action Works, which aims to protect the planet by connecting people to local grassroot organisations.

We designed a media plan, created the assets and implemented the PR campaign.

Highlights included securing the attendance of high-profile environmental journalists to a briefing event including The Telegraph, New Statesman, The Independent, Financial Times, London Evening Standard and Business Green, resulting in widespread national coverage.

To date we have generated 52 pieces of coverage with over 602 million opportunities to see through target media.

HelpForce

We are strategic communications partners for Helpforce, a pioneering programme improving volunteering to benefit patients, volunteers and NHS staff

We developed Helpforce’s communications approach and launch strategy, resulting in high profile coverage in key opinion former media when we launched the organisation in December 2017.

In just over one year, we have secured more than 150 pieces of coverage across key national and health sector media, significantly enhancing the profile and perception of NHS volunteering through thought leadership, insights, case studies and interviews.

In December 2018, we worked with Helpforce on a major Christmas campaign partnership with the Daily Mail, leading to more than 33,000 people pledging to volunteer with the NHS, offering a combined total of 1,861,200 hours of support.

The campaign – which featured prominently in the newspaper throughout December including five front pages – received backing from a wide range of public figures. The campaign was praised by Theresa May, the head of NHS England and the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The Prince of Wales called it “an incredible example of British spirit that will make a real difference to so many people’s lives in the months and years to come”.

KPMG and National Numeracy

Poor numeracy skills are rife across the UK and impact individual lives, employers and the economy.

With a shared vision for social change and complementary expertise and knowledge, KPMG and National Numeracy came together to change attitudes towards numeracy and improve individual skills.

We provided PR support and strategic communications to both KPMG and National Numeracy to create and launch the UK’s first ever National Numeracy Day. Launched on 16 May 2018, it celebrated the importance of numbers in everyday life and helped empower individuals to improve their numeracy skills.

We developed an audience-focused strategy supported by stakeholder engagement and public campaigning which led to all targets being beaten.

25,000 people registered to improve their numeracy, starting their journey towards improved numeracy skills and providing a much-needed spur to social mobility and productivity.

Over 100 employers were actively involved

10,000 shares, retweets and likes on social media, trending on UK Twitter for several hours, with a 28.2 million reach and over 7,400 mentions with tweets from Channel 4, BBC, The Prime Minister, and Which?

Celebrity ambassadors such as Bobby Norris shared messages about National Numeracy Day on Twitter

Coverage in Evening Standard, Metro, The Mirror, The Express, Good Morning Britain, BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio, and Sky News

NHS Charities Together

We worked with NHS Charities Together throughout its COVID-19 appeal. We managed the charity’s reputation and helped grow its profile

It was seeking support across communications including communications strategy creation and planning, partner engagement and development, media engagement, social media management and content creation

As the only way to give money to support the frontline workers, volunteers & patients, NHS Charities Together received unprecedented attention during the pandemic.

We supported the team through planning and content creation to streamline media, partner and enquiries from the general public.

We managed all partnership creation from charity singles and t-shirts to ice-creams and jewelry. This included brands such as M&S and Pandora.

We also provided reactive and proactive media relations, including around Captain Tom’s fundraising, which raised £33 million for the charity.

Selfridges

We provided consultancy and activation support for the launch of the transformational flagship sustainability initiative, Project Earth.

Following six months of detailed planning we secured stand out coverage in national print, broadcast, online and sustainability media with over 377 pieces of coverage generated to date.

Our work began more than six months before the launch and fell into five key areas:

Focus and planning – building the narrative

Podcast support – in build up to launch

Launch planning – including detailed development of plans, materials and spokesperson briefings

Profile building – identifying opportunities and securing slots for key spokespeople

Media activation and momentum around the launch

Generating a media reach of >3,370 million, it stimulated widespread discussion, changing global thinking on retail and leading to speaking platforms as well as social media memes. Social media mentions were up 6,700% compared to the previous 30 days.

Tesco National Charity Partnership

Forster developed the Let’s Do This campaign for the National Charity Partnership, formed between Tesco, Diabetes UK and British Heart Foundation.

The campaign aimed to help women and their families become healthier by trying new and simple ways to get their bodies moving and eat more healthily. 

Since Let’s Do This launched in January 2016, it has reached over 20 million people and helped around one million people become more active. In the last 12 months, 27,000 women have logged and reported on their success on over 80,000 activity and nutrition goals on the Let’s Do This website.

Centre for Ageing Better

We are working with Centre for Ageing Better to help ensure more people can enjoy a good later life. The organisation was set up with an endowment from the Big Lottery Fund of £50m and is working to bring fresh thinking to society’s challenges and opportunities as more people live longer.

We created a new brand for the charitable foundation, developed its website and produced its initial communications strategy.

We are strengthening its voice through a reactive press office, and a rolling feature / thought leadership programme that puts the organisation at the heart of the debate.

Recycle for London

We’ve worked with Recycle for London on a range of engaging campaigns since June 2016 to raise awareness and increase recycling rates. Our media engagement for year one resulted in a combined total of 72 pieces of coverage across broadcast, online and print, with a range of London-wide and borough specific outlets.

We developed a fun media story around bad bathroom habits as well as hosting two interactive portaloo confession booths, where we distributed branded loo rolls with recycling messaging. We generated 18 pieces of media coverage with a combined circulation of 33,501,887 and increased the reach on Facebook by over 13,000% as well as boosting visits to the website by over 15%

We developed tailored stories to promote electrical repair workshops, resulting in 13 pieces of coverage with a total reach of 3,260,683, including interviews on BBC Inside Out and BBC Radio London

We encouraged Londoners to swap glitter for a different kind of sparkle, leading to 9 different articles with a combined reach of 186,844

betty for schools

We have worked with betty for schools since March 2017, launching its period education programme and driving awareness and engagement among teachers and parents of girls and boys aged 8-12.

We have highlighted the value of the programme by running creative campaigns to challenge taboos and raise awareness of the issues surrounding current period education and girls and women’s attitudes and knowledge of their bodies and cycles. We have also supported the implementation of the education programme via targeted promotion of the ‘betty bus’, an interactive touring resource for period education.

In five months, we have generated 121 pieces of targeted coverage with a reach exceeding 263 million, which has contributed to a significant rise in the numbers of teachers downloading resources – 1014 in total.

Our work to promote the betty bus contributed to the original target for bus sign ups being exceeded by 234% within the first two weeks after launch, and more than 800 schools have requested visits from the bus to date.

Recent evaluations show that over two thirds (69%) of pre-pubescent girls felt more prepared to start their period and nine in 10 (91%) felt that following the education they received, they would know what to do when they did. Additionally, 63% felt less scared or worried about periods than previously.

Young Women’s Trust

The Young Women’s Trust supports and represents young women who are struggling with confidence and employability, through their Work It Out service. We were set the challenge of driving young women, aged 18-30 on low or no income, to sign up to the service.

Our approach was a digital advertising campaign. Thorough channel plans were developed for Facebook, Twitter and Google AdWords. We also identified our two key audience groups
to target – ‘stuck and strained’ and ‘back to the future’. Using these two audience groups
we developed a suite of keywords and graphics which were shared at various points throughout the six weeks.

Young Women’s Trust set us the goal of generating 100 sign-ups over the six week period. We reached this KPI within the first two weeks and received 646 sign-ups in total. Web traffic also increased by 45% from start of campaign to end and 524 new page likes on Facebook and 212 followers on Twitter were gained as a result of the campaign.

Throughout constant campaign optimisation and detailed audience analysis, we produced a suite of graphics and ad copy that successfully drove action from our key audiences.

Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families

Forster began working with Anna Freud Centre in 2015, at a time of exciting change and evolution for the charity. As a charity that has delivered pioneering mental health care for children and families for over 60 years, they were embarking on an exciting project to develop a new Centre
of Excellence in King’s Cross, London. Forster’s role was to develop and deliver communications to support a capital appeal to help fund the new Centre of Excellence, and concurrently, to review and refine the charity’s brand, to ensure that it was fit for purpose and accurately reflected their pioneering, dynamic ethos.

In 2016, the charity unveiled their new brand under the name Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families – reflecting their unique focus on making the whole family part of a child’s mental health journey and treatment. Forster have worked closely with the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families leadership to put out a call for a step change in the way we conceive of and treat children’s mental health.

We have been working with clinicians and professors within the Centre to bring the latest in scientific research and understanding of mental health in children to the public with great success, notably in our partnership with the Huffington Post and the Duchess of Cambridge’s ‘Young Minds Matter’ series.