As part of our journey to change perception of The Ramblers and raise awareness of its work, we turned our focus to the accessibility barriers that prevent people from enjoying time outdoors. The key to the campaign was finding a true hero to represent the cause and highlight the importance of making green spaces accessible to everyone.
Achieving The Ramblers’ ambitions
The Ramblers’ Association does a whole variety of amazing work, both daily through its network of volunteers and at a national level working to make our outdoor spaces better for everyone.
The outdated perception of The Ramblers as a walking club doesn’t really reflect its current purpose and ambitions. The charity works tirelessly to improve poor access and ensure everyone has access to paths within 15 minutes of their home.
At Aspire, our mission is to gain the widespread coverage that this work deserves, and raise awareness of the inequities in access to green spaces.
For this campaign, we posed the question: “How accessible are our paths?” We wanted to highlight the work that The Ramblers is doing to improve this situation and create walking opportunities for all.
By raising awareness, we wanted to reach some of the 22 million people who regularly enjoy walking for leisure but don’t understand how The Ramblers works for their benefit.
“Having the ability to access nature on my doorstep makes a big difference to my mental wellbeing, as well as providing some active recovery when I’m not training.”
Striving for gold standard coverage
Our plan was to create a campaign which would have a massive impact while, crucially, being easy to digest by the media and public.
The creative idea was to find a champion to spearhead the campaign and shine a light on the issue of accessibility barriers to outdoor spaces.
We wanted to spread the message that accessibility covers all sorts of situations, whether it’s physical and hidden disabilities, older people, those with pushchairs or dog walkers.
Our ambassador would focus on physical disabilities as a ‘hero’ topic but also ensure they represented the full spectrum of accessibility issues.
We were thrilled to engage Paralympic hero David Weir CBE. He is the perfect combination of a media friendly name who can communicate The Ramblers’ vision of greater accessibility to the countryside.
By securing David, we had someone who could speak with authority and authenticity. He had his own personal story of spending time outdoors and the positive impact it has on his mental health.
With David onboard, we got straight to work to film content, plan the media narrative and generate interest with key media outlets and publications.
Amplifying accessibility issues
173
pieces of multi-platform coverage
1.13bn
total audience
3m
estimated views
Getting great access to the media
The campaign achieved strong results, confirming that our strategy to engage an ambassador was a good choice. David Weir gave us access to more media than we could have reached without him.
We helped The Ramblers to secure a huge 173 pieces of multi-platform coverage, spanning broadcast, national newspapers’ websites, lifestyle, regional, running and outdoors media.
Broadcast highlights included an interview with David on BBC South East, interviews on BBC Radio Sussex, BBC Radio Surrey and TalkSPORT.
Print and online exposure include national coverage in The Independent and Evening Standard websites, BBC News and 150+ pieces of regional print and online media coverage.
The message also reached into broader areas such as sports media, with Aspire securing an interview with David for the BBC Sport website to coincide with the 25th London Marathon.
The interview included a click through to filmed content with David hosted on The Ramblers’ YouTube channel. The piece was syndicated on Yahoo! Sports, further extending the message to a new audience.
The campaign did a huge amount to raise awareness of accessibility to the outdoors and highlight the important work of The Ramblers.
