Face

Bill's Farm

Problem

Farming & Countryside Education (FACE) is a charity relying on private funding to carry out its mission: educate British school children about food, farming and the countryside. To increase sponsorships, donations and support they needed to generate interest and awareness amongst marketing managers and their communications agencies.

Insight

Media and marketing professionals are cynical people who are constantly bombarded by companies trying to sell them something. We needed to engage them in an entertaining and inspiring way, to ensure that they would not only want to get involved with FACE, but also pass the message on.

Solution

After conducting research into how educated British school kids are about where their food comes from, we recruited comedian Bill Bailey as our spokesperson, scripted and shot a film that he starred in. Kids say the funniest things, and this, combined with Bill Bailey's comic presence, created a light-hearted tone for a serious message – almost one third of British children don't know where bacon comes from. We seeded the film online and launched a highly-targeted direct mail campaign to marketing professionals.

Results

Bill Bailey tweeted the film to his 228K followers and posted it on his Facebook and personal website. The campaign featured across both marketing and farming trade press. It has been shared on blogs, re-tweeted and the Youtube video has had over 8,000 views, despite no other advertising except our DM campaign. Brands like Tesco, Jordan's, Cereal Partners and Marks & Spencer all expressed interest in partnering with FACE and there has been a four-fold increase in traffic to the charity's website.