Photo credit: John Phillips/PA Wire
December has come around very quickly here but we’re getting into the festive swing of things. And our campaign of the week is very much in that spirit.
You may have spotted that something a bit different happened with the Christmas lights on Oxford Street this year. For the first time, Oxford Street partnered with a charity for its world famous Christmas lights display. The NSPCC joined forces with toy brand Hasbro to launch its Little Stars campaign, asking members of the public across the country to donate a suggested £5 to name one of Oxford Street’s world famous lights for someone special in their life. All money raised goes to the NSPCC’s life-changing services that help keep children safe.
The NSPCC shared their insights into the campaign with us. Their Head of Marketing Tessa Herbert said: “The Little Stars campaign in partnership with Oxford Street’s Christmas lights is an amazing opportunity to raise awareness and understanding to a wide audience of the NSPCC’s life-changing helplines and face to face services with children and families. With our partner Hasbro we are encouraging the public to tap into the spirit of Christmas by making a donation to name one of Oxford Street’s world famous lights for someone special in their life, sharing their personalised message on social media.
“We are also promoting the campaign via our partners The Metro and The Mail Online both of which reach a wide regional audience and will offer readers the chance to donate £5 to name a light, no matter where they live. Content has included a combination of engaging and emotive real life stories and interviews with celebrity supporters including Wayne Rooney and Michael Sheen. We hope that by encouraging people to make a donation and name a light on Oxford Street for someone special we can in turn raise money for vital work that helps keep children safe.”
The NSPCC team have generated some pretty impressive results since the campaign launched on 12th October. Since then, they’ve clocked up 600,000 unique page views and 250,000 unique users to the Little Stars website. They have also been using Echomany to reply to people’s tweets with a personalised animation when people talk about the lights or Little Stars. Through the tool they’ve reached nearly 1 million people, seen an uplift in the engagement rate by 300%, and had nearly 5,000 media plays.
Whether you are a large or small charity, we hope Little Stars encourages you to think creatively about who you could partner with on your festive campaign and to do something that’s really different and stands out. Amidst all the consumerism that Christmas entails, this is a lovely campaign which gives people the opportunity to remember someone they love and to help NSPCC continue it’s fantastic work.