Mercieca educates parents on help with Uni costs.

Leverhulme

Task

The Leverhulme Trade Charities Trust (LTCT), which offers financial support to the families of people working in grocery, convenience and pharmacy, enlisted Mercieca to help raise awareness of its work and drive applications to its 2024/25 bursary schemes.

Looking for an integrated approach that brought together PR and advertising, LTCT also wanted to refresh the look and feel of its current creative. So, we got to work!

What we did

Crafted a news pipeline to ensure a steady drumbeat of coverage throughout the campaign in convenience, grocery and pharmacy titles

Tapped into our relationships with industry organisations such as Association of Convenience Stores to publish the stories on their platforms and member newsletters

Media buying

Worked closely with our trade media partners to create a high visibility advertising plan across print and digital

Crafted long-form advertorial copy to land deeper messaging around LTCT’s purpose and the important work it delivers in the sector

Creative

Our studio completely overhauled LTCT’s look and feel by using a brighter colour palette (while incorporating the charity’s signature green), creating bespoke illustrations that would resonate with our audience and devising light-hearted yet meaningful copy – including a simple yet winning new strapline.

The eye-catching artwork was adapted into a suite of assets, from print and digital adverts to posters the charity could use at events – all with CTA to drive potential applicants to the LTCT site.

Results

Mercieca’s PR campaign landed 45 pieces of coverage with a reach of over 1 million.

The earned media combined with strategic ad campaign and new look and feel successfully resonated with our target audience – applications saw a +35% increase on 2023.

Reach

Increase

35%

“2024 was an important year for LTCT, as we placed a renewed emphasis on our educational bursaries, launched a new School Essentials Grant for community pharmacists, and set ambitious targets to increase applications to our undergraduate and postgraduate schemes – all with the intention of helping more families than ever before."

“The expertise and guidance of Mercieca throughout the campaign was invaluable, and we were delighted with our new look and feel, high visibility through PR and advertising, and fantastic uplift in applications.”

Sam White, Leverhulme Trade Charities Trust