Covid Aid

Building an award-winning national charity during a pandemic crisis.

Situation

Amidst the pandemic, we identified the need for a charity providing specific support around COVID-19 – recognising the need and opportunity for an organisation which could collate and provide reliable information and links to resources. 

Action

With Covid Aid, we took a start-up approach – building a first-class website and producing a unique three-step strategy which made use of increasing analytics to identify audience needs and ultimately reach more than 330,000 people with advice, information, and support, becoming shortlisted for ‘Charity of the Year’ in the process.

Image of an ad campaign at a bus stop, with the poster and its text spilling down beyond the bottom of the poster frame and on to the pavement.

Result

This strategy culminated in the Covid Aid Support Community launch, which was built upon an innovative online platform and won Best New Community at the prestigious CMX Awards, with other finalists including Adobe. 

In time, the community grew to almost 2000 members, providing a range of classes, courses, live events, peer support, and much more – all free to access. As the charity’s natural lifespan came to a close, the Community has continued onwards under independent member ownership, showing how a member-led model can lead to further support and empowerment.

The Longest Ad

We also worked with The Leith Agency to create The Longest Ad; their creative team brilliantly encapsulated what it can be like to live with Long Covid. The Longest Ad won at The Drum Roses Awards as well as receiving international recognition and highlighting the need for support and action.

As well as the physical advert, we created further engagement through posting The Longest Ad as an intentionally sprawling series of Instagram Stories, making the most of the social platform’s ability to reach a wide audience.

Built by the team at Faur

Covid Aid was built by many of those who are now part of Faur’s collective, with its best-in-class website and eye-catching branding a result of a cooperative and collective approach from day one. We realised that by helping each other, we would already be making a positive impact, one which we could grow outwards as we continued our work and added key collaborators, ambassadors, and organisational partners, including the likes of Marie Curie and Asthma + Lung UK, providing a model and ways of working which we believe can be put to use both at Faur and our partners.