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Buy Our Boots

The Thames Valley Air Ambulance crew work 365 days of the year, from 7am to 2am and are called out seven times a day, on average, to help people in need of urgent critical care.

For their Christmas appeal, TVAA asked us to create a supporter mailing that would celebrate the hard work of the team – including their boots!

The Story: Every Christmas cash appeal needs a seasonal theme and on this occasion it was the ‘workers’ of Christmas – i.e. Santa and the Thames Valley Air Ambulance crew! (And particularly their boots).

The Brief: A responsive DM cash appeal to raise money for the Thames Valley Air Ambulance at Christmas.

Our Response: We asked donors to ‘Buy Our Boots’ and, more generally, to help supply the kit that the TVAA crews need to save lives at Christmas.

Why it Works: By telling the story from the point of view of the crews’ own boots we gave the appeal both personality and cut-through. We also made sure to include a powerful real-life story, on this occasion the moment a woman whose life was saved by the crew, got the chance to meet them and say thank you.

Results: The appeal raised £77k against a target of £50k, achieving a response rate of over 15%.

TVAA also received over 750 messages of support on the Christmas tree baubles for the crew members – with people taking the opportunity to thank them for their life-saving efforts, including some personal stories of the TVAA crew having rescued family members or friends.

Black Bear understand our mission, crucially what we do, and how we wanted to develop our communications with donors. Everyone is easy to work with at Black Bear, they’re honest, experienced and have lots of creative ideas.
Neil Harman, Director of Fundraising

150% of
target raised

Black Bear understand our mission, crucially what we do, and how we wanted to develop our communications with donors. Everyone is easy to work with at Black Bear, they’re honest, experienced and have lots of creative ideas.
Neil Harman, Director of Fundraising