The National Trust for Scotland

Building membership among
a new generation of visitors

Background

Like its English counterpart, The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) is an independent conservation charity with a mission to protect and promote Scotland's natural and cultural heritage for everyone to enjoy.

The Trust depends on membership subscriptions, visitor admissions, donations and legacies to continue its work. Times had changed however. To an extent the Trust was still perceived as a rather worthy, 'tweed jacket' organisation. As a brand, it had become out of step with its audience - now younger, and many with young children. The Trust needed to appeal to a generation that regularly sits down to watch 'Antiques Roadshow' or 'Groundforce'.

Elmwood was invited, along with ad agency 1576, to review all promotional material and refocus the brand through its 2004 literature campaign. The brief was to establish greater consistency across all literature, make it more accessible, more exciting and more appropriate to a younger audience with families. Ultimately our objective was to boost membership and increase admissions across NTS's properties.

Solution

Working with the existing strapline 'For you', we reorganised the range of promotional leaflets into a suite of fourteen, breaking Scotland into clusters to encourage members to visit more than one property in an area. Copy was rewritten to address a modern audience. Photography now features NTS staff and visitors prominently. The chosen colour palette is now bold and contemporary.

The campaign has been extended to a new membership leaflet and we are currently working on The Guide to Properties, NTS's key bi-annual publication.

Results

We are currently awaiting confirmation of increases in membership and visitor numbers from the client. Following the popularity of the new design system, the campaign is being extended and planning of the 2005 promotional literature has commenced.