The National Trust
A charity with a cause to look after special places for ever, for everyone.
However, awareness and relevance were in decline – less than half of their own members knowing that they were a charity and the general public seeing them as an out of touch organisation buying up country houses so the elderly can drink tea and eat cake.
Our role was to reinvent National Trust communications from visitor marketing to cause-led brand marketing. The starting point was the organising idea – “growing the nation’s love of special places.” This brought together visitor (love and enjoy) and conservation (love and protect) behind one common goal for the first time.
This was communicated by making the oak leaf of the National Trust logo a living symbol for our unique and powerful relationship with the places.
The oak leaf becomes a verb, an active expression of our feelings about places. Both personal and universal, we can use it to explore all aspects of our relationship to places.
It was the glue that held together all communications from on-property signage, to merchandise to performance marketing, OOH and TV.