Christmas appeal
Overview
Christian Aid’s Individual Giving team commissioned Claire and Rebecca to develop three campaign concepts, a content pack, design toolkit and suite of fundraising collateral.
Client
Christian Aid
Year
2025
Contributors
Concept, copy and design leads
Audience insights
Christian Aid’s Christmas appeal is the charity’s second-highest-grossing annual fundraiser.
The brief asked us to explore the impact of conflict on women and their families.
We were briefed to give all concepts an urgent look and feel by drawing inspiration from emergency humanitarian appeals.
Concepts needed a clear connection to Christmas, drawing on traditional aspects of the nativity, such as displacement, a temporary dwelling, and having to leave belongings and comfort behind.
To cut through a busy seasonal marketplace, we were also asked to evoke meaningful festive memories of family and community.
Christian Aid briefed us to target two of their three core audience segments. Responding to the motivations and challenges of these audiences was at the heart of our concept and content development.
Christian Aid’s ‘Mentors’
Aged 30-50
Motivation: Acting on a moral duty to help make a positive difference in the world. A lens of justice deepens their empathy, for example denied rights restricting ambition.
Challenge: Though their compassion is high, the seemingly insurmountable scale of extreme poverty makes their optimism low.
Outcome
With creativity, collaboration and hard work the campaign delivered:
Income of £1.54m against a target of £1.68m with more final totals to be collated.
Individual channel performances that vastly exceeded previous year’s results.
Direct mail packs that raised £505,137 – 38% increase on Christmas 2024 income!
“Our appeal had incredible results – hugely exceeding targets across direct mail, email and paid digital ads.
I firmly believe Claire and Rebecca’s amazing creative work was one of the key reasons for its success.”
“Claire and Rebecca have a gift for bringing stories to life, from concept creation right through to delivering campaign assets.
“Having been privileged enough to work with them on our Christmas Appeal in 2025, together they created for us a bold and original concept that would cut through and resonate with our supporters, at a time when we know the fundraising market is very busy.
“But what always strikes me the most is the thoughtfulness, detail and care with which they approach their work. For Christmas, they always kept the people whose stories we were telling at the heart of what they were producing and ensured that these were really able to shine.”
Ceri Smith
Individual Giving Lead
Key briefing facts
Christian Aid’s ‘Custodians’
Aged 50+
Motivation: Inspiring and protecting future generations. They are proud of the UK’s role in supporting low income countries to leave poverty behind for good.
Challenge: Their optimism has been reduced by increased poverty in the UK and the effect of the cost-of-living crisis on their own adult children.
Process
Our comprehensive process included:
Thoroughly appraising source materials to identify conceptual opportunities and challenges.
Planning and leading ideation sessions with in-house creative team.
Reviewing and refining all ideas to reveal the most compelling.
Developing and presenting adcepts, sample copy and posters for stakeholder review.
Analysing heat maps and incorporating stakeholder feedback to refine final concept.
Writing a 38-page content pack full of strategic, print-ready copy.
Producing a design toolkit to ensure consistent executions of the campaign’s identity.
Supporting internal clients to compile copy for a wide suite of fundraising collateral.
Designing on-brand print and digital resources for individual and community giving teams.
Bringing oversight, consistency and refinement to all Christmas campaign collateral.
Proofing iteratively to achieve sign-offs.
Preparing print and digital files.
