NSPCC’s Childline: Ready for every question
Shortlisted in the 2025 Purpose Awards
The NSPCC approached me and the team at Open (a renowned fundraising agency) with a challenge - to come up with a bold new Christmas campaign, without any new case studies or content to work with. We had to find a way to breathe new life into stories and content we had seen many times before, to keep the public interested and keep capturing hearts and minds with emotional and relevant story-telling.
The problem
We needed a new angle - and that’s when I landed on the simplest and most compelling part of our case study stories - the questions children ask.
I thought about how we associate childhood with curiosity, how children will ask questions and ask questions every moment of every day. Are we there yet? Are unicorns real? How does Santa fit down the chimney? For the children that call NSPCC’s Childline, the questions are much more heartbreaking. Why does my mum hate me? How do I make him stop? These are the questions I wanted to highlight, and to position Childline as THE organisation to help: always ready for every question.
With a suite of timely and relevant social ads, a direct mail campaign and a heart-wrenching DRTV ad, the team and I spread this message far and wide and massively outperformed the previous Christmas campaign, drawing a huge response. Our DRTV ad also caught the industry’s attention and shortlisted in the 2025 Purpose Awards. Most importantly, through a huge influx of donations that hit way above target, we helped Childline support thousands of children in need of someone to call.
