PR Portfolio: TreeSisters
PR campaign grows legacy forest for ‘Captain Tom’
Introduction
Captain Sir Tom Moore, who raised over £38 million for the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic, was an inspiration for many with his message of hope for a brighter tomorrow. In tribute to his life and influence, his daughter Lucy Teixeira and her family invited people to plant trees and grow a living legacy forest in his name.
The Trees for Tom campaign – which fell outside the charitable work of the Captain Tom Foundation – was collaboratively spearheaded by two leading environmental charities which were chosen to grow Sir Tom’s legacy forest on behalf of his family: The Woodland Trust in the UK and global reforestation charity TreeSisters.org. Between these two charities people were able to plant trees both locally in the UK and in eight other countries around the world. Both charities plant and protect trees to help mitigate climate change, preserve biodiversity and bring communities together, working to create a brighter future for people and planet.
The campaign hoped to grow a wood in Captain Tom’s native Yorkshire and help reforest a part of India – both places dear to his heart – as a way to honour his hope for a brighter tomorrow.
“Working with such a high profile celebrity as Captain Sir Tom at the sad time of his death, required careful and sensitive management which Will skillfully navigated. His years of experience working in the PR business combined with his passion for ethical and restorative living helped us work positively and collaboratively with a competing charity and deliver a highly effective and widespread national media campaign that raised over £100k for legacy tree-planting in Captain Sir Tom’s name. Will was a joy to work with!”
Cali White – (Former) Business Development Manager, TreeSisters
Representing our client TreeSisters, Conscious Frontiers worked alongside the Woodland Trust press office to publicise the campaign and generate donations for Trees for Tom.
Leading the PR collaboration between the two charities, Conscious Frontiers wrote two press releases which provided the focus for the campaign. The first press release, distributed shortly before Captain Sir Tom’s funeral, introduced the campaign and invited donations for the two charities to plant trees.
The second press release, submitted a week later, announced that the first £100K fundraising milestone had been met, raising enough to enable the planting of 50,000 trees via TreeSisters across the tropics (including in India), and to plan the implementation of a memorial woodland in Yorkshire through the Woodland Trust.
Captain’s Tom’s Memorial Wood in Yorkshire was ultimately conceived by way of extending and renaming the pre-existing Holme House Wood in Keighly. Now complete with 3,000 additional saplings, it links together two remnants of precious ancient woodland.
Media coverage
Over 580 press articles were generated for Trees for Tom with an OTS of 35,034,259.
Coverage included:
- BBC TV World News interviewed Cali White, a spokeswoman for TreeSisters, during their live coverage of Sir Captain Tom’s funeral about the Trees for Tom campaign
- Five further national broadcast pieces: BBC TV News, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, 2 x BBC Radio 2 (Zoe Ball & Alan Carr), Sky TV News
- Six national print articles: i newspaper, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Express, Sunday Times, Sunday Times (Scot), Metro
- Nine national online articles: BBC News Online, ITV.com, MSN, Mail Online, LBC, Metro, Yahoo news, iNews, Hort week.
- Six regional broadcast pieces, including: BBC Three Counties Radio, LBC, Heart Bedford
- 20 regional print articles including the London Evening Standard
- Hundreds of online regional pieces