Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Herd of Hope

When offering to support Sheldrick Wildlife Trust with some of my experience, the team asked me to look at one particular campaign that they were running. The campaign centred around lifesize elephant sculptural pieces created by two artists. These elephants were to be travelling around the UK as part of a tour. Already in situ but without much marketing around it, the team weren’t completely happy with the original story and name ‘The Orphans’ that had been written for the art pieces and asked me to try and reshape the campaign. The team wanted to focus on hopeful stories and inspiring language rather than focussing on traditional donation-charged charity language that can sometimes be negative and pleading in tone. Having taken their wishes onboard, I rewrote and reshaped the webpage, using the idea of ‘hope’ very much as a central point.

‘The Orphans’ became the Herd of Hope and all text was rewritten to present the positive stories of each of the elephant orphans featured in the herd. I wanted to play with the idea of elephant migrating across London to create immersive language for the visitors going to see the exhibition. I brought in the symbolism of donations from the public and nurturing through the statue of the matriarchal figure - creating an inclusive and supportive feel to the campaign. Alongside this, I created a fun quiz to allow children to get involved by learning more about the elephant calves represented - and one they could either do on site with their phones or at home on their computer (given that this was during COVID lockdowns). Because of the lockdowns, I suggested that the team create a video to allow people to travel through the herd in Spitalfields (and following locations) to allow them to feel like they are there and seeing the sculptures in situ. The names of the elephants represented are shown in the video so that people can look into the background of how these elephants came to Sheldrick, allowing them to build up relationships with the individual calves - you can see this video on the Herd of Hope page.

The result was a campaign with a hopeful message that encouraged donations and engagement in a softer, inclusive way., allowing people from around the world to view the sculptures from their own homes during lockdowns

The page can be found on the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website here.