National Trust to bolster digital marketing teams
National Trust is looking to bolster its digital marketing team by a third as digital and social media become a bigger part of its efforts to change perceptions of the organisation.
It hopes to add around 10 digital marketers, including social media specialists to its 30 strong in-house digital team.
The news comes as the organisation, which is also shortlisted for the 2012 Marketing Week Engage Awards for a previous digital campaign, launches its first social media-led marketing campaign.
It has launched a Facebook app that uses the social network’s Sponsored Stories platform within the Timeline to raise awareness of the broad range of venues it owns, such as pubs, beaches and Paul McCartney’s childhood home, as well as the historic estates it is best known for.
The Great British Day Out competition, developed in partnership with e3, invites Facebook users to create their perfect day out at one of National Trust’s venues around the UK and share it with their network of friends. The public is then asked to vote on the best ideas. A National Trust judging panel will then choose a winning idea from the 20 with the most votes and make it happen.
The activity is part of National Trust’s wider “Time Well spent” above the line marketing campaign, and sits alongside a ‘gamification’ initiative launched earlier this month to encourage children to “reconnect with nature” and change perceptions of the kinds of places it looks after. The “50 things to do before you’re 11 and three quarters” digital campaign uses avatars, games, videos, levels and digital badges to encourage kids to do outdoors activities like climbing trees. If they do all 50 things on the list they win a secret reward.
Tamasine Johnson, senior campaigns and social media manager at the National Trust, says the aim of the social media activity is to take advantage of the “shareability” that Facebook offers to broaden its reach beyond existing members or fans.
It also comes a year after the organisation restructured its brand marketing team and appointed Clare Mullin as its first brand and marketing director.
