Creative-led digital impact for Battersea

Battersea is one of the UK’s most recognised animal welfare charities, caring for over 3 million animals since 1860. Their mission is clear - to be there for every dog and cat.

They campaign to prevent the causes of poor dog and cat health and welfare, support pet owners and want-to-be pet owners, share their expertise in the UK and beyond, and partner with other charities and organisations to make the biggest impact for every dog and cat, everywhere.

Battersea’s brand reflects this commitment. Based on the fundamental principles of ‘Joy, Expertise and Endeavour’, the brand comprises a blend of compassion and expertise, grounded in the belief that every animal deserves the best chance at a good life.

Charities today face an evolving digital landscape, with new platforms, changing audience behaviours, and constant pressure to deliver results.

Battersea’s brand is one of the strongest in the sector, and they were already running successful digital campaigns. But they were coming up against challenges. For Battersea, this meant making their strong and highly recognisable brand work harder in digital-first campaigns, while keeping pace with the demands of digital fundraising and bringing together creativity and strategy.

How could they reflect such a beloved, recognisable identity in digital-first creative that converts? How could they take a more insights-based approach, tailored to their digital fundraising channels, rather than repurposing existing offline campaigns? And how could they test and learn to inform future campaigns in an ever-changing landscape?

They were looking for a partner who could combine digital marketing with creative concepting and production to drive results, whilst working alongside their in-house team in a collaborative way to test, learn and improve over time.

Our partnership with Battersea started with one goal: to make this recognisable and effective brand work harder across digital.

Rather than thinking campaign-by-campaign, we took a step back, aiming to develop a creative strategy designed for long-term fundraising success and donor engagement.

That meant:

• Including creative testing plans within each campaign to fuel optimisation and audience learnings.
• Providing strategic recommendations across the full supporter journey.
• Sharing insights from across the charity sector to help Battersea spot opportunities early and respond quickly.
• Building a deeper understanding of audience data and motivations, so every message resonates.
• Working in a transparent, collaborative way with their team, turning insight into action as campaigns evolved.

Implementing a test-and-learn approach unlocked huge opportunities. We were able to create content tailored for each platform and meet audiences with the right message in the right moment, without losing the authenticity and warmth of the brand.

Here are some examples of how that thinking has come to life.

Lottery: standing out in a crowded space

Lottery fundraising is a staple across the charity sector, and we wanted to understand how Battersea could make their lottery creative stand out from competitors. Following a landscape analysis, we saw that many organisations were leaning heavily into the gaming aspect, highlighting the “what’s in it for me” element of giving, often softened with cause-led messaging.

We wanted to test how Battersea could do this differently. Rather than leading with prizes alone, we explored how to balance the gaming mechanic with Battersea’s cause and personality. Humour played an important role here, helping to bring warmth and approachability into the ads while still respecting the seriousness of Battersea’s work and reflecting the ‘Joy’ at the heart of the brand.

We built on the existing ‘You play, so they can play’ concept, and came up with ‘Do it for him/her’ and ‘Live like royalty’ as additional creative routes. All concepts aligned clearly with the gaming element of lottery fundraising, while weaving in the cause in a way that felt human and inclusive. We used conversational language, the ‘Paws’ font, and playful visual details like paw prints and illustrative arrows to reinforce that light, friendly tone.

The approach delivered strong results, including a 70% reduction in CPA and Battersea’s highest lottery click-through rate on Meta in over four years.

Legacies and free wills

For legacy activity, much of the existing creative had been adapted from direct response TV. While this worked well in broadcast, it wasn’t always optimised for use on social platforms, meaning it wasn’t performing as efficiently as it could.

Free wills activity was already performing well on digital. The creative leaned into animal-led imagery with a light-hearted tone that helped it stand out from competitors. There was an opportunity, however, to go further, particularly by introducing different creative and messaging for younger audiences at key life stages who may be starting to think about making a will.

Together with Battersea, we developed a creative approach that could flex across both core legacy and free wills messaging, while broadening appeal across age groups. The focus was to refine creative messaging, understand what resonated with different audiences, and identify the most effective combinations of audience, platform and format to drive high-quality leads at an efficient cost.

Visually, we introduced a dotted line motif in Battersea’s orange accent colour. This was designed to represent longevity and continuity, and to create a clear visual link between core legacy and free wills activity.

For core legacy creative, we tailored elements to different audience groups. For supporters aged 50+, this included vintage photography and messaging that leaned into the longevity of Battersea’s care, reinforcing authenticity and aligning closely with the brand’s principle of ‘endeavour’.

For the 35–50 age group, we used nostalgic, relatable imagery that reflected people’s own experiences of growing up with pets, paired with messaging about Battersea’s wider impact.

For free wills, we included imagery and messaging based on audience motivations, such as ticking something off the ‘to-do’ list for the younger audience, and leaning on the nostalgic elements for the older audience.

Early results saw a CTR of 0.68% against a benchmark of 0.40% for core legacy activity, and a CPA for free wills that was 27% below target. Our next step is to build on these learnings and shift to an always-on strategy to build deeper, ongoing engagement.

Christmas cash

Battersea found that winter paid social appeals had underperformed in recent years, with a saturated charity marketplace pushing up CPAs and making it harder to drive results.

We wanted to refresh the creative with a digital-first approach, developing a clear and impactful proposition that stood apart from direct mailing packs, demonstrating both need and solution, and why it was important to give now. The resulting creative positioned the donor as a vital link in the chain, Battersea as the experts, and the donor as the person who makes care and transformation possible.

This idea was brought to life through short, mobile-first video ads and supporting stills designed to work naturally in social feeds. The videos opened with blue, snowy scenes paired with more rigid typography, before shifting to warmer footage of animals being fed, cared for and settling in. As the story progressed, so did the typeface, transitioning to Battersea’s lighter, more playful ‘Paws’ font to emphasise the change from isolation to comfort, and the impact Battersea and the donor had made.

We also juxtaposed the different fonts to highlight the ‘from’ and ‘to’ element of the creative - using the lighter-hearted ‘Paws’ font to show how the transformation for the animal, and the impact that Battersea - and the donor - had made.

Finally, we used illustrative effects such as snow-style backgrounds and festive details within the imagery, including Christmas trees and seasonal touches, to accentuate the seasonality of the creative and strengthen the ask.

This work with Battersea shows how digital fundraising can be strengthened when creative and performance are considered together.

Rather than treating campaigns as standalone moments, we focused on building understanding over time, seeing what people respond to in-feed, how different formats behave across platforms, and how strong brands can flex without losing their identity.

For charities navigating similar challenges, it’s a reminder that digital creative doesn’t need to be louder or more complex to work better. Often, it just needs the space to be tested, learned from and thoughtfully refined.