NATIONAL TRUST | AUTUMN + CHRISTMAS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN
This was a wonderful job which came about purely by chance.
Browsing around LinkedIn one day, I saw a copywriter who I had once worked with at a large design agency just outside Nottingham around 2010.
He was now Copy Lead at the National Trust, so I thought Hello! I’ll ping him a quick message.
‘Hi mate, got any work?’
(Copywriters get to the point in very few words.)
Turned out he had.
Next thing I knew three cracking briefs came winging over for social media campaigns to appear in Autumn and at Christmas.
The first two were for conventional membership and gift membership campaigns to go on paid channels like META which includes Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest and Google.
Each one would use a pre-approved campaign proposition across all of the platforms, and follow the standard reserved and understated National Trust tone of voice.
The third was a wild card.
In the Summer, the National Trust had run a campaign on the news and social network, Reddit which featured stock shots from their massive library with a clever headline added.
These had been much more playful than the traditional National Trust style and went down a storm with the Redditors who use the channel.
Here are some of the concept ideas for Summer which were worked up.
You get the idea.
So the third brief was for another Autumn campaign to go on Reddit which was to adopt the same quirky tone of voice which had worked so well in Summer.
The challenge for me was to select images from the National Trust’s library of over 140,000 photos that:
Were seasonal and either clearly autumnal or non-seasonal. I.e. People shown should be dressed as if its autumn. They can be participating in autumnal activities like playing in leaves, dog walks, drinking a warm drink, engaging with autumnal nature
Represented all three key topics of ‘Nature, Beauty and History’
Then I had to add a humorous or whimsical headline which playfully worked off the image, gently sold the idea of gift memberships and included a call to action.
Hard work. But tremendous fun and I’m pleased with the results.
Just because they’re Reddit posts doesn’t mean they can’t have proper headlines written by a copywriter.
Not be just bland content or AI drivel.
