I. BRIEF
The Gala Dinner is Lichfield Cathedral’s largest and most prestigious fundraising event - a biennial black-tie dinner hosted in the Cathedral itself. For 2025, the event featured the newly arrived Fenland Black Oak table, a remarkable 5,000-year-old artefact, which became the centrepiece for the event.
I was tasked with marketing the dinner across social media channels, as well as piloting an online bidding campaign - a previously unexplored avenue for engaging audiences ahead of the dinner itself.
II. STRATEGY
To build momentum far in advance of the event, I produced a series of carousel posts three months out, using archival photography from previous years and pairing them with informational copy. These were posted regularly in the run-up to the dinner, serving both to establish familiarity and create anticipation.
Closer to the event, the launch of the online auction one week before the dinner presented an opportunity to expand reach and participation. I developed a series of short-form videos highlighting individual auction lots in collaboration with businesses that had donated items, drawing from the proven success of this format during our winter campaigns and encouraging collaborative promotion that created mutual value.
For the Cathedral, this approach extended the campaign’s reach and reinforced its position as a cultural hub worth supporting; for the businesses, it provided a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate corporate social responsibility, generate positive brand sentiment, and align themselves with a respected heritage institution.
This public alignment also served a longer-term strategic purpose of signalling to other potential donors the reputational benefits of supporting the Cathedral and encouraging future collaboration.
The frequency of posting increased in the final stretch, timed to align with the arrival of the Fenland Black Oak table. I produced content around the table itself to drive interest in both the dinner and the Cathedral more broadly. In addition to Facebook and Instagram, I also published content across LinkedIn to reach wealthier individuals and corporate networks with potential to become future patrons, ensuring the campaign addressed both community that would previously have not engaged with the dinner, as well as the core audience.
III. DESIGN
All visual content was kept clean, premium, and consistent with the Cathedral’s brand guidelines. Due to the favourable lighting conditions during content production, I was able to avoid the film emulation techniques I had previously relied on to counteract low-light noise during the Christmas Campaign in particular. This allowed for crisp, elegant visuals that conveyed professionalism and aligned with the expectations of the core audience, without alienating the new audience engaging only online.
IV. DELIVERY & PERFOMANCE
Content consistently outperformed the Cathedral’s social media averages in both reach and engagement. The pilot run of the online auction was particularly successful, with a strong conversion rate from social media to the bidding platform, and a high proportion of online bids being competitive with those made in-person. This demonstrated the viability of online pre-engagement as both a marketing and fundraising tool, offering clear potential for future events.
Financials for the Gala Dinner are still being processed.
I also photographed the event on the night, completing the full visual narrative from campaign through to documentation. The success of the campaign reinforced the value of a content-led approach to fundraising and helped establish a blueprint for similar hybrid-event strategies in the future.
