Working with Adidas on their international advertising campaign
We have been working with St Ann’s Hospice providing them hospice PR to secure them national media coverage, which has led to working adidas on their latest advertising campaign.
Barbara Thackray is an 85-year-old grandmother who has been supporting St Ann’s Hospice for over 10 years. She has been fundraising due to her late sister Audrey was a patient at the hospice and wanted to give something back after the excellent care her sister received. Barbara has raised nearly £20,000 for the hospice since 2011.
From previous national coverage of Barbara’s achievements, the world renown sports brand adidas got in contact with us. They wanted Barbara to feature in a new campaign advert for their brand, specifically their ‘impossible is nothing’ advertising materials.
As an avid runner, Barbara shows how she is an inspiration to many and that at any age you can take part in sports – which is what adidas want to include in their advert.
Barbara features amongst the likes of Liverpool footballer Mo Salah and Egyptian runner Khadija Hegazy.
You can watch the advert that we secured for St Ann’s Hospice here. This video alone has 997,000 views, celebrating that running needs nothing but you.
Local and national coverage for our hospice client
Our work with Barbara began in September 2022, when she ran her local Altrincham 10k and was the fastest in her age category, completing the race in one hour and 30 minutes.
On the day of the race, we organised for Barbara to be interviewed by BBC North West Tonight. The coverage highlighted her fundraising success and spread awareness of the hospice’s work; this was later shared on BBC Online as well.
The coverage we had secured around Barbara amounted to 19 pieces, ranging from local pieces in Altrincham Today to BBC News Instagram page, with a total of 5.98 million estimated views and 170,000 engagements.
This all added up to boost our client St Ann’s Hospice’s donations and engagement from local people who wanted to support the charity too.
Recent interview on BBC North West Tonight
Since Barbara’s fame in the adidas advert, she ran the Trafford 10k on her 85th birthday in March, and also achieved a personal best time of under 85 minutes!
Through local coverage we secured around this race, BBC North West interviewed Barbara live on the sofa to hear more about the adidas advert and her race.
Sophie, one of our Senior Account Executive’s, accompanied Barbara to the BBC studios in MediaCityUK where she oversaw the filming and live interview that took place.
It was a great experience for Barbara who was previously unaware of the iconic status she has gained through all her fundraising in the Greater Manchester area!
The importance of hospice PR
Barbara is a strong advocate for hospices and speaks passionately about their importance. “Their philosophy is totally different to the hospitals who see death as a failure – you’ve failed if you die. Hospices recognise that death is part of everyone’s experience, and their attitude it that they respect this and do their best to enable the person who is dying to have the best possible experience they can have.
“My sister’s death was much better due to the St Ann’s Hospice; they’ll do whatever they can for their patient to have the best quality death they possibly can have – and that’s worth supporting.”
“I’ve always supported St Ann’s Hospice and helping them has been an extra motivation to keep running. I know they’re building a new hospice and need funds now more than ever.”
Barbara is now fronting the Build It Together campaign that the hospice is running, always being an inspiration as a fundraiser and supporter of the charity.
You can read more about the hospice PR we do at High-Rise here.
