Issue: Q2 2023
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Anatomy of a Campaign: Help for Heroes

It all started with a bike ride to help wounded service personnel. But within just 18 months, Help for Heroes had mushroomed into a multi-million-pound charity phenomenon racking up the kind of press non-profits can only dream of: The X Factor number ones, international rugby matches, The Sun front pages and more. Christian Koch looks back on the remarkable story…

In May 2008 the Help for Heroes (H4H) team returned to their tiny office in Tidworth, Wiltshire fresh from their first-ever fundraiser - a 350-mile charity bike ride across northern France. The event raised £1.4 million; a successful conclusion to the previous six months which saw the neophyte charity raise a staggering £6.2m for British service personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were planning to retire the charity but then received a phone call asking if they could visit London for a meeting.

Upon arriving in Twickenham, H4H was met by the England rugby union team and representatives from Sky TV. They wanted to host a rugby match, which could raise a further £1m. As plans were hatched, somebody from the gathered group said, "Obviously, we'll need to link with your comms team."

There was a pause. H4H didn't have one. The only answer they could muster is H4H had some offices in a tin hut in Tidworth. 

The initial success of H4H in those early days is even more remarkable given it was achieved without a PR team. The founders - Bryn and Emma Parry, plus Mark Elliott - would do much of the publicity themselves, despite having never worked in the media or charity sector: both Bryn and Elliott had served in the British Army, later becoming a cartoonist and managing director of an insurance firm respectively. But within just 18 months, they'd scored a number one (The X Factor Finalists' version of Mariah Carey's Hero; the fastest-selling charity single of the decade), garnered support from Princes William and Harry and hosted the international rugby match that persuaded them to continue the charity. To date, H4H has raised an estimated £400-500m, launched recovery centres and helped 27,000 people live well after military service.

"We didn't have a PR team because we didn't have any money!" remembers Elliott. "We felt that we didn't need PR/marketing teams giving us PowerPoint presentations telling us what to do when we had a clear vision already. We also didn't want to waste money: every penny should go to the sick and injured. Journalists would ring up and ask to write an article or visit, and we'd let them. We were just passionate amateurs, which we felt was better than professionalism. After all, the Titanic was built by professionals and look what happened there." 

Bryn and Emma holding a large teddy bear

Emma and Bryn

Strong vision 

When Elliott and the Parrys founded H4H in October 2007, it had just one aim: to organise a charity bike ride to raise £10,000 for a swimming pool at Headley Court, the military's medical rehabilitation centre in Surrey. At the time, British troops had been stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan for four and six years respectively. Some soldiers were returning home with horrific injuries. The Parrys (whose son, Tom, was touring Afghanistan with the 2nd Battalion of The Rifles) and Elliott would visit the wounded at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. "You'd come away in tears, wanting to do something," says Elliott. 

So they set up a charity, with cartoonist Bryn drawing logos and the Parrys' daughter, Louise, designing a wristband. H4H's first piece of publicity came from Jeremy Clarkson, whom the Parrys had persuaded to become a charity patron when they discovered Clarkson's then-wife, Frances, was a regular visitor to Selly Oak. 

In September 2007, the day before H4H officially launched, Clarkson's column in The Times mentioned "these lunatics in a tin hut who want to raise money" (as Elliott puts it). A BBC Breakfast appearance followed while The Sun splashed with a Tom Newton Dunn-penned story on H4H. The donations started pouring in. 

"People would ring up wanting to donate, but we had no way of taking credit cards," remembers Elliott. "Cheques started coming in for thousands of pounds. I'd put them in the back of my car and bank them at Lloyds in Tidworth."

Shortly afterwards, The Sun contacted the charity, wanting to embroil it into an anti-government campaign. "The Sun told us, ‘It's outrageous this is happening… we're going to beat up the government over this'," recalls Elliott. "We said, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. You can either join us on this journey or not…"

Elliott describes their press strategy as "just flooring it. We just went anywhere we could to tell people what we were doing".

Despite refusing to be co-opted into The Sun's political agenda, News International was crucial to the charity's early successes: both The Sun and The Sunday Times featured H4H as their Christmas appeal. Within 18 months, The Sun was also including H4H in a heart-tugging Johnny Vegas-voiced TV advertising campaign made by agency WCRS and had organised an ‘Auction for Heroes' collaboration with eBay. 

Back in the tin hut, Elliott describes their press strategy as "just flooring it. We just went anywhere we could to tell people what we were doing".

"Ultimately, it was down to not forgetting our own gut instincts. Having served for 25 years, I can sniff out bull**** a mile off. We'd return from sitting at the bedside of a wounded soldier - often in tears - then have a PR company ring up attempting to pitch us or tell us what to do. Bryn would just tell them to sod off. Luckily, we found Kate Bosomworth who could put up with that stuff and gently guide us…"

Mark and Gareth Southgate

Mark and Gareth Southgate / Getty

The new PR chapter 

Bosomworth was an experienced sports PR, who had founded her own agency in 2003. She was aided by a "little comms" team of three young volunteers, who would look after social media and organise diaries. 

In the meantime, the public was generating valuable local and national press through a series of creative fundraising stunts. Whether it was somebody sailing to Anglesey in a hollowed-out pumpkin, a clairvoyance evening in Worcestershire, an 80-year-old skydiver or a bungee jump in a mankini, newspapers and TV stations were there to cover them.

By 2009, £1m a week was coming through H4H's doors. Princes William and Harry wore the charity's wristbands and attended H4H events such as rugby matches and a fly-past at St Paul's Cathedral. There was an H4H concert at Twickenham Stadium with Robbie Williams and Peter Kay. H4H's name popped up on merchandising: branded underwear, dog collars. 

Two rugby players looking at the camera holding a rugby ball.

In 2010, H4H scored a second number one with The X Factor Finalists' cover of David Bowie's HeroesElliott remembers Parry being summoned to Simon Cowell's London office "where Bryn was quaking in his boots. This was all out of our comfort zone. I'd never met a celebrity in my life. They scared the s*** out of me!"

Not everybody was happy. There was tension with other charities helping military veterans, such as the Royal British Legion (organisers of the Poppy Appeal). "We were hated because we tried to change things," remembers Elliott. 

Meanwhile, H4H angered the Ministry of Defence (MoD) through its work with wounded servicemen - many of whom were left blinded, severely disfigured or as amputees. 

"The MoD believed the public wasn't ready for the realities of war," says Elliott. "But we argued that it was a positive story - these men and women were coming back alive. My friends whom I served with in Northern Ireland are all buried in cemeteries. To see a triple amputee or somebody in a coma become married with kids or employed is a good news story. We just wanted them to be supported better." (H4H later developed a partnership with the MoD). 

Given its rudimentary comms setup, the H4H team was constantly learning about PR storytelling. One important lesson arrived during the charity's infancy, remembers Elliott.

"We had some footage of a friend who had a rocket-propelled grenade take out his arm. We had pictures of the surgery - his arm hanging off, showing all the tendons and blood dripping. We thought this was impactful and would emotionally draw people in. Then we thought, ‘No, this will give them a heart attack'. So we toned it down."

 

Positive message

Another key learning was about showcasing positivity in the PR storytelling. 

"We didn't want to portray these amputees or blinded servicepeople as ‘victims'," says Elliott. "It's very easy to go down the negative line, showing everybody homeless or sad. But we wanted smiley faces and what could be done to support them… I think the British public liked that." 

The lack of jingoism in H4H's campaigns - there was no Land of Hope and Glory flag-waving - resonated with the British public

The lack of jingoism in H4H's campaigns - there was no Land of Hope and Glory flag-waving - resonated with a British public who were increasingly opposed to the wars (one 2007 BBC poll found 60 per cent of people thought the invasion of Iraq was wrong).

"Previously, people who disagreed with Iraq were less inclined to donate to anything that purported to support the war," says Elliott. "H4H changed that; now people were willing to support these young men and women who were coming back broken and needed fixing." 

The number of young people involved with H4H also marked it out from other veterans' charities. Elliott believes this is because "these service people lying in hospitals weren't old people moaning about bad hips - they were 18- and 19-year-olds. The old ethos was ‘They can have a Stannah stairlift, wheelchair and a walking stick'. We weren't going to sit there and wait for that to happen."

H4H continues to help service personnel facing homelessness, unemployment and mental health problems after being discharged from the British Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force.

"H4H changed the pace of fundraising, but also the attitude," reflects Elliott now. "Sixteen years ago, people told us it was impossible and couldn't be done. We've raised £400-500m, but I'm still a bloke in a tin hut… YOU can achieve a lot of things with absolute passion, commitment and common sense."

 

https://www.helpforheroes.org.uk