Writer-Director

In my role as a writer-director I’ve been to many parts of the developing world over the last decade with international aid organisations, such as Save the Children and Age International, capturing the reality of people’s experiences, and translating these experiences into some of the most globally successful fundraising campaigns ever run.

The purpose of these trips were often multifold – gathering content, conducting interviews and telling the stories behind community development projects, but the main objective was always to create a compelling fundraising campaign with a DRTV ad at its heart.

Case Study: Save the Children

Save the Children had a highly successful suite of DRTV executions, yet they could see that there was a need to modernise and future-proof their fundraising programme in line with their evolving global brand proposition.  

Their DRTV needed to reflect the reality of the situation on the ground. So we set out to strip away some of the conventions of DRTV and show people what was really happening.

This meant adopting a reportage approach, capturing the raw and visceral nature of what it’s like to stand in the shoes of a Save the Children doctor fighting to save a sick child, or the mother who has carried the child through mile after mile blistering heat to reach the hospital. It meant filming late into the night and often before sunrise. And it meant absorbing the words of the doctors, the parents and the children themselves in an attempt to get close to their experience.

With each DRTV ad below, we tried to highlight something simple and tangible as a solution. A solution our audience could relate to, and one that could be bought for the few pounds we were asking of them.

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is rife in the northern regions of Kenya. In fact, when we filmed in 2019, pneumonia was still the world’s biggest killer of children under 5. And yet no one associates pneumonia with hot weather or with children. In 2020 this was Save the Children’s top performing ad globally.

Homelessness

Shot late into the night in and around bus and train station in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Emon was one of many, many children we met on the streets without a bed or a place to call home. This ad was one of Save the Children’s top performing ads for four years 2016-2019.

Malnutrition

‘Kayembe’ was the first ad I worked on with Save the Children. We travelled to deep into the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the hospitals are often full of children so malnourished they can no longer eat, and where doctors and nurses operate in a constant state of emergency. This ad was Save the Children’s top performing ad for the majority of the four years it was on air, from 2014-2018.