About The Great Get Together

The Jo Cox Foundation, and subsequently The Great Get Together, was founded after the murder of MP Jo Cox in 2016.

The aim of The Great Get Together is to enable people all over the UK to hold events to tackle loneliness, division, and build stronger communities.

The first Great Get Together took place in June 2017 exactly one year after Jo Cox’s murder on what would have been her 43rd birthday. It broke records as the biggest nationwide celebration since the 2012 Jubilee. Since then it has happened annually in the Spring and at Christmas.

How we worked

I was commissioned by the agency Empower to support The Great Get Together from 1-4 days per week as needed. Although supported by the rest of the agency’s team at times, I became the lead on the project. The work took place over 3 years from 2017-2020.

I was first hired to work on digital marketing around the Christmas campaign in 2017, and continue working on the campaign until 2020. Over that period, I provided a huge variety of services – too many to name here! – but they broadly fell into these categories.

Digital expertise

As different workstreams and ideas developed throughout the campaign, I provided in-depth knowledge and experience of the digital aspects of campaign delivery. This included inputs into communications and PR strategies, stakeholder engagement, and evaluation approaches.

Website management

When we took over management of greatgettogether.org it was largely a lead-generation site, set up quickly to capture supporters’ data during the early stages of the campaign.

Over the course of the two years we turned it into a space that showed the breadth and depth of the campaign, celebrating the successes of past years’ events and providing valuable information to organisers in a personalised and responsive way.

Email marketing

Day to day, I was responsible for writing and designing most of the campaign’s regular email marketing output, to inspire and inform existing supporters.

I also played a key role in the migration of data between two email management systems, advising on GDPR compliance.

Social media community management

I sourced and created content output for the campaign’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds, as well as nurturing and growing the communities that surrounded them in the spirit of the campaign’s principles.

During the two-year campaign:

• The Facebook Page grew by 30%

• Twitter grew by 47%

• Instagram grew by over 200%.

I also helped them to set up a Facebook Group specifically for organisers to share tips and ask for advice on their events. The membership of this group was 2,404 when I completed work on the project.

Paid social media

To accompany every key campaign moment I helped run large paid Facebook campaigns. This included originating or repurposing content, developing custom audiences, campaign optimisation and evaluation. We typically reached over 2.5 million people each year.

Video production

I am a video specialist. I have developed the skills to deliver high quality, timely video content at a low cost because I know the one-off £5,000 hero piece is just not going to give charities the return on investment they need. I make every second of footage we have work for us.

For The Great Get Together this meant gathering, cataloguing and repurposing footage to fill their social channels day to day. This included news footage of Jo and the Foundation’s spokespeople, user generated content from supporters and event organisers as well as, on occasion, working with video agencies to produce professionally shot films at key moments of the campaign.

Design

A rare foray into print marketing, I designed selfie boards, banners and printed reports as well as social media graphics.

Evaluation

During active campaign periods I provided weekly reports and advice on ongoing digital strategy that allowed us to meet targets and to allow the team to adapt messaging accordingly.

I also provided ad-hoc campaign evaluations, including social listening reviews.

Support the Jo Cox Foundation in other areas for around a year including the Connection Coalition, and its Community Makes Us campaign.

The 2019 events, the final year I worked on the campaign, 720,000 people took part in more than 11,000 events