– Alex Achkar, Senior Planner Think back to last Christmas. No one could have imagined a festive season as strange as it was. With pantos, family parties and Santa’s grotto on hold, the year ended in a grandly disappointing and fitting finale to 2020 – lockdown Christmas. Cue the ‘big man in red’ himself, Santa Claus, to save the day and keep the Christmas magic alive for the nation’s youngest, one letter at a time. Last Christmas, Open worked with the NSPCC to take a fresh look at their long-established and very successful flagship Christmas offer, ‘Letter from Santa’.  In a socially dis ..read more

– Noah Lipschitz, Planner It has been just over a year since I started at Open. I have been thrown in the deep end, inducted into a new team with new processes and personalities, and learned all about the not-for-profit sector/agency-life and their respective quirks. These were all things I expected and looked forward to – what I did not expect, however, was that I would be undertaking this all from my home.  The past year has emotionally pushed many in ways that they did not foresee. While locked down, homes have become the locale for working, educating, exercising and more. Romantic rel ..read more

– Sam Hibbard-Daniels, Senior Account Director   The highs and lows of our Covid year are something we’ll look back on for a lifetime. We baked Sourdough and we won zoom quizzes. We fought furlough, and many of us lost loved ones. For NHS Charities Together (NHS CT) the highs and lows of 2020 were no different.  While our NHS workers were on the front line saving lives, NHS Charities Together was fundraising at scale for their ongoing support.  Back in spring 2020, as we stood on our doorsteps to clap and cheer in celebration of our brilliant NHS, in awe of their fight agai ..read more

“Charity is a UK term. It’s a nice term. A kind term that conjures images of hugs, pocket change and lots of cake. But it’s not doing us any favours in the corporate space.” – Amy Hutchings.   Last week I spoke to a few hundred keen fundraisers about the rise of purposeful brands and what it means for charities. If you missed it, you can catch it here. In short, a new wave of ‘purposeful’ brands are making bolder claims about their impact on society and the planet, restructuring their strategies, and making it easier than ever for people to do good. The lines are blurring for the public a ..read more

The things I’ve learned about creativity, and myself, during Covid – James Dawe, Senior Art Director at Open   Don’t panic (Go easy on yourself) To state the obvious, this past year has been worrying, unknown, scary, boring, lonely and repetitive on a seemingly endless loop. The work has felt harder, motivation has sometimes been more difficult to come by, and the feeling that you’re on your own has been hard to shake. But, to (badly) paraphrase Dolly Alderton, to live through this, perhaps with children to school and care for, and to remain creative, inquisitive, and excited about ..read more

In October 2020 we partnered with the London Wildlife Trust (LWT) as part of their Keeping it Wild project; a project to ‘empower and inspire 600 young people aged 11-25, from backgrounds currently under-represented in natural heritage, to gain vital skills while discovering, conserving and sharing their experiences of the capital’s wild spaces’.  Working with over fifty young people over two weekends, Richard Young, Creative Director,  and Amy Hutchings, Strategy Director, led a series of in-depth workshops to teach these future campaigners what they need to know about digital marketing ..read more

It’s not news to tell you coronavirus has dominated fundraising conversations in 2020. From March this year, the sector faced bleak uncertainty with the threat of declining income, restructures, and impending recession. Some charities took action while others waited it out with varying results. As predicted, some larger organisations like Macmillan are expecting a multi-million-pound drop in income for flagship fundraising events, but others, like UNICEF, have experienced record-breaking fundraising success. But are these results purely driven by coronavirus, and what does success really look ..read more

We’re a competitive bunch at Open and we love winning pitches. But we were especially happy last week when the team at the Trussell Trust told us that they’d chosen us to be part of their mission to end the need for food banks. That’s partly because the Trussell Trust is a bit of a favourite cause at Open’s annual giveathon – we love what they do and we’ve been proud to support them financially over the years. And, of course, it’s an organisation that has responded magnificently to the current crisis. But we’re mostly pleased – and excited – because the Trussell Trust has asked us to think and ..read more

How do we get a nation in lockdown, focused on their families and their futures to think about what coronavirus means for a child in Bangladesh? Or Yemen? That was the challenge Open and Unicef were faced with a few weeks ago. And we knew that if we didn’t meet it, it would be devastating for millions. No pressure then. Working closely with Unicef’s teams, we developed a creative approach that took what we were all learning about coronavirus from the daily briefings, and flipped it to make our message urgent and relevant. We all know that coronavirus is more deadly for those with pre-existing ..read more

I spend a lot of my time planning integrated campaigns with our clients, and the one thing everyone wants is to be relevant. To be part of the conversation that’s happening right now. And these days, that’s no mean feat. Our moods and conversations are swift, dynamic and transient. Social discourse is increasingly impermanent and hard to grasp, taking place in stories and snaps that are gone within hours or minutes. If you’ve ever seen a murmuration of starlings, shift and turn, I imagine it something like that. Millions of tiny pieces of content, flowing and changing each moment. This year i ..read more