Adopt A Word

ICAN (Speech & Language UK) helps children develop the speech, language and communication skills they need to thrive. In order to help support their vital work, specialist schools and training provision, they needed an innovative fundraising campaign.

That simple (and genius) idea – ‘auctioning off the English language’ came from the client, and working collaboratively with Remedy Creative and Rogue, we provided the rest. Branding, e-commerce website, adoption certificates, t-shirts, campaign/marketing support and more.

Branding and design, whilst clearly sympathetic to the main I CAN brand, was boosted with playful typography and impactful colours. We created a graphic ‘wordiverse’ background from some of the 80,000 words on offer and applied this across all the printed items, including the customised certificates that were digitally printed to order. We also designed an interactive ‘word cloud’ for the website that showed all words and their adoption status.

With an official partnership with Collins and wide support from several influential celebrity and corporate adopters including Stephen Fry, Kraken Rum and Vodafone, the campaign proved itself original, sustainable and very successful. With campaigns running for Christmas, Valentine’s Day and beyond, it reached over 45 million people, and with 1000 words adopted in the first six months alone, increased online donations for the charity by more than 2500%!

After such great success, it’s no wonder Lindsay Boswell, former chief executive of the UK’s Institute of Fundraising, commented that “Every charity should look at this neat idea executed with simple and clear brilliance as an e-commerce masterclass in action.”