London Air Ambulance using snap digital campaign as it seeks uplift in supporters

The campaign, entitled "You Stop, We Stop" focuses on the concept of time for the creative materials and short film. It is intended to focus people’s minds on the idea of whether they could afford to wait for help if they needed an air ambulance and it was not available.

Time is the key factor

The air ambulance can be airborne within four minutes of receiving a trauma call and has an average flight time of less than seven minutes, which could make the difference between life and death for a seriously injured patient.

The service costs £10m a year to run, with the majority of funding coming from public donations. 

The creative, developed by digital agency Zeal, emphasises the air ambulance mission to save lives, while reminding the public that if they stop donating, the service will stop running. 

Social media-led campaign

The week-long campaign, which launched on Monday, is running predominantly on Facebook and LinkedIn because these two platforms offer the best potential for audience research.

The charity hopes to use data derived from the campaign to identify male and female audiences aged between 18 and 60 who consider the air ambulance to be a good cause.

Air Ambulance hopes the campaign will help it to build its social following on Facebook and LinkedIn, which it believes are underused platforms in its comms armoury, and will use resulting data to deliver more sophisticated targeting next year for its 30th anniversary activities.

The campaign, which coincides with National Air Ambulance Week, will run until 17 September on social media. There will be additional digital out-of-home advertising for the remainder of the month.

During last year's Air Ambulance Week the charity ran a campaign that used on-screen graphics to highlight the costs associated with the service.

Growing supporters and followers

The charity said it would measure the success of the campaign through social-media engagement, increase in page 'likes' and by using YouGov data to measure overall brand awareness, as well as an uplift in donations during the life of the campaign. 

London Air Ambulance serves 10 million people who live, work or commute within the M25 area, but a survey for the service last year found that two-thirds of people in the region did not know it operates as a charity.

Louise Robertshaw, director of marketing and communications for London Air Ambulance, said: "To deliver our life-saving work we have to reach more supporters and build bigger awareness of our charity. We hope that this very targeted campaign will help us do this by growing followers across Facebook and LinkedIn and securing a high engagement with our campaign content. This is the first time London’s Air Ambulance has delivered a campaign of this nature and we are excited to see how it is received."