How CALM leveraged pro bono agency relationships to build a brand
Campaign against living miserably (CALM) is perhaps the pre-eminent example of a UK charity that has built out a widely recognised and admired brand in the third sector by leveraging pro bono relationships with advertising and brand agencies.
Simon Gunning has been CALM’s CEO since 2017 and has overseen a truly seismic transformation of the brand and its operations. CALM has gone from eight employees to 158, has a 60% brand recognition in the UK, and was the most awarded advertiser in the world in 2023. They’ve also launched some of the most impactful and award-winning campaigns of the last decade, including Project 84, Suicide Notes and The Last Photo.
A large part of CALM’s success is down to what Simon calls the “fucking brilliance” of their pro bono creative agency partner, adam&eveDDB. We spoke with Simon to ask him about CALM’s approach to working with pro bono partners — and his insights into how smaller charities can build fruitful, mutually beneficial relationships in the long term.
Here’s 10 things we learned from an illuminating chat. To read the full piece, please head here.
1. From the start, the strategy of growing CALM was to behave like a brand
2. Finding partners required putting the work in
3. For a pro bono relationship to work, the charity has to act like a fee-paying client
4. That first campaign set the standard
5. Small charities should find a guide to show them the ropes
6. They also need to build that ad experience in-house
7. The fact that the relationship is pro bono should never influence the work
8. In a long-term relationship, if the ideas get stale, look inward first
9. A good brand partnership can be just as important as an agency partnership
10. CALM leans on different partners for different purposes
Read the full interview on our site.
It’s obvious that not every charity in the UK can expect, or indeed has the need, to see the kind of growth that CALM has experienced in the last few years. But being smart and proactive about building pro bono relationships with the advertising sector makes sense for both sides of the equation, and for several reasons — something we touched on in more detail in our recent post on the topic.
Perhaps chief among them, and something we’ve also discussed in depth, is the need for charities to properly compete with purpose-led brands in the attention economy.
Head to our website to find out more about our work and plans for digital transformation in the third sector.
