THE GRAND APPEAL

Communications strategy, Earned media relations, Content creation

As the dedicated charity for The Bristol Children’s Hospital, the festive season is a major fundraising period for The Grand Appeal.

The Shine Bright for Bristol Children’s Hospital campaign is the centrepiece of this activity and AMBITIOUS’ brief was to shine a light on the fantastic fundraising efforts and achievements of The Grand Appeal and families.

To pull focus on some of The Grand Appeal hero fundraisers and secure organic media coverage locally, hyper locally and nationally.

The general public and local businesses.

Our strategy was to focus efforts on quality and sheer quantity of media coverage. One of the key challenges to securing media coverage was that one of the hero fundraising families, The Brailsfords, are exceptionally well known, having been fundraising for over 20 years. Naturally, they are a media draw, with historic relations with most titles and outlets. So, we had to be sure to get in early with media to line up interviews and media opportunities.

We focused on a mixture of regional broadcast, print features and national newswire syndication for maximum reach and penetration.

Tapping into our black book of media contacts in the region, this is exactly what we secured.

As well as securing media buy-in across broadcast and newswire syndication, we also put creative effort into photography, in order to secure large print features within the Bristol Post, which offers a key readership demographic for the charity.

We had the in-house skills to create and provide all of the necessary written and visual content for the Bristol Post ahead of publication.

We secured 139 pieces of media coverage in December 2022 with a combined reach of approx 350 million.

In addition to this, we also secured:

  • 146 additional pieces of follow up coverage in January 2023 with a combined reach of nearly 400 million
  • National titles such as: The Mail Online, London Evening Standard, Daily Mirror, The Independent
  • Key regional titles such as: Dorset Echo, Bristol Post, Radio Bristol, Points West, ITV West, South Wales Argus