Stand PR: SSAFA Valentine’s Video

Stand PR approached VPI with a video production brief for their client SSAFA (The Armed Forces Charity), who wanted to create a video as part of a valentine’s day marketing campaign. The video would serve as a message from servicemen and women to their families on valentine’s day, to share an emotional and warm message of love. The plan was to create a ‘marryoeke’ style music video, edited to a well- known track, which would include servicemen and women from several locations miming to the track. The final video would be used across SSAFA’s social media accounts and website. The aim was to create sharable content that would generate lots of engagement and help SSAFA share their message far and wide.

After the client chose a music track, we advised them on a royalty-free cover in order to keep costings down and allow internet and broadcast sharing without a copyright claim. The filming then involved working fast, with careful and creative direction as we had limited time with each group of participants.

What impact did the video have?

The social media video was successful in making an impact online via the SSAFA social media channels and was screened nationally on ITV on Valentine’s Day. From our client, Stand PR’s summary: ‘In the first days, the video had over 50,000 views. Despite a saturated media space, we secured national coverage for SSAFA. The video element to the campaign lent itself perfectly to online, broadcast and digital platforms, and was shared live on popular ITV show Lorraine, online on Metro and across several regional broadcast outlets such as BBC South Today and BBC West Live. We found that there was genuine positive sentiment amongst social engagement of the video, notably across SSAFA’s own social platforms and amongst members of the Armed Forces community. This campaign not only raised awareness for military personnel, but for SSAFA’s support services, highlighting what they do day-in-day-out for over 73,000 people across the UK and abroad.’