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Mayday is the RNLI’s premier fundraising campaign, designed to deliver the vital funds needed to keep crews out over the bustling summer period. In the run up to this key period, the RNLI gave us a simple task: “Make us a relevant charity to donate to”.

Seems simple enough, right?

In practice, this meant creating a campaign that had universal appeal over an incredibly wide range of audiences across the UK and Republic of Ireland, with enough flex left over to cover all its life stages.

The RNLI: for real people, by real people

Facing this slightly herculean task, we chose to utilise the RNLI’s greatest asset: a hard-hitting bank of real rescue stories. We’d explore the relationships of the people saved by the RNLI with those that they would have left behind.

What ‘saving a life’ looks like after the dust has settled

Our campaign creative focused on the small pieces of intimacy that constitute a life: a small smile, a slight nudge, or the admiring glance of a dad who loves his son. We paired these details with the powerful reunions between those rescued and the team who saved them.

Engaging with the volunteers

The RNLI wanted to launch Mayday in RNLI heartlands up and down the country. So, we decided to focus our efforts on branch activation, which meant considering the engagement, activation and opinions of over 1,000 locations.

We engaged with branches at various locations to lay out the plans and objectives of the campaign, as well as get crucial feedback on what their communities valued. This led not only our creative approach, but also our media direction.

Delivering our campaign

The media centred around branch locations, ensuring we maximised local awareness and engagement. We also developed launch packs, DM pieces, poster packs and activity books for local volunteers to use and share in their communities.

We also used WebtoPrint to track all downloads of materials available, which enabled us to optimise during the campaign’s runtime and produce more high-demand collateral.