You Can Foster

Shifting perceptions to recruit more foster carers

Campaign identity/Art direction/Copywriting/Script writing/Messaging/Campaign strategy/Film production/PR campaign/Event planning/Web design/Web development

Photography by Jonathan Keenan

The North West Fostering Forum needed to transform how people thought and felt about fostering and drive new, good quality enquiries.

We were delighted to win the pitch to devise and launch a new, region-wide foster recruitment campaign. We came up with You Can Foster: a positive, empowering campaign that focused on real foster carers and tackled the myth around who can foster.

Everything we did was grounded in audience and stakeholder consultation, where we could truly get under the skin of fostering: the benefits, rewards, challenges and perceived barriers.

The first phase of the recruitment campaign hit the streets in 2010. We delivered visual brand, tone of voice and copy lines, marketing strategy, TV and radio adverts, the campaign website, advertising toolkit and usage guidelines for Local Authority roll out plus a full media relations and PR campaign.

Phase 1:

over 5,000 enquiries

secured over 200 additional foster carers… exceeding the target of 150

Highly commended Chartered Institute of Marketing Excellence Awards

In 2016, we refreshed the brand, developed an entirely new creative execution, and again delivered TV and radio adverts, the website and full marketing and advertising guidelines and toolkit.

Both phases of the campaign were rooted firmly at a local level: we built relationships with the Forum members and understood the different local needs. In fact, we built campaigns that could easily be localised, and we ensured each Local Authority team had the toolkit (including brand guidelines, tone of voice advice, key messages and advice on advertising and brand usage) to roll out their own, local version of the campaign, whilst retaining the overall brand integrity.