I. BRIEF
I was tasked with delivering a cohesive marketing campaign running from 30 November to 1 February, encompassing both Advent and Christmas as well as the quieter period that followed.
Key deliverables included an A5 bi-fold leaflet promoting services and events across the season. The campaign's success would be measured through key performance indicators focused on increasing attendance, driving traffic to the seasonal pages on the Cathedral’s website, and monitoring digital reach through GA4 analytics, particularly traffic sources, landing pages, and bounce rates.
II. STRATEGY
My approach began with competitor research, where I examined how other cathedrals successfully structured their seasonal campaigns. A clear trend emerged: emotionally engaging, story-driven content had the most impact. Building on this insight, I leaned into my video production background to craft a narrative-led campaign that would resonate with audiences.
I developed the strapline “Your Christmas, Your Cathedral,” a natural evolution of the existing creative proposition “Your Cathedral.” This guided the first leg of the campaign from 30 November through to New Year’s Day.
I centred the campaign around heartfelt stories from Cathedral staff and volunteers, asking them to share their most cherished memories of Christmas at the Cathedral. Each contributor also recommended a service or event, subtly nudging viewers to attend without an explicit call to action.
This approach helped foster a sense of belonging and aspiration, as viewers were encouraged to create their own meaningful experiences through the very events that shaped the storytellers’ own traditions, acting as a softer sell without that direct call to action.
The content was then adapted into visually cohesive Instagram and Facebook carousels using the campaign's distinctive design identity (described in the Design section below).
In addition to digital content, I produced the A5 bi-fold leaflet and supported the design and implementation of in-Cathedral promotional materials, including large A0 boards providing chronological event listings for Advent and Christmas.
I also assisted with “The Holy Family,” a printed perspex installation featuring a modern reinterpretation of the nativity. I supported this project through photography, composition guidance, and AI-assisted design. The final piece drew media coverage from Lichfield Live and the Express & Star, further extending reach.
II. STRATEGY CONTINUED
The second phase of the campaign, running through January, focused on capitalising on the momentum generated during Advent.
Knowing that only 29 percent of January’s Cathedral events were worship-focused, I recognised an opportunity to engage audiences differently. I created a carousel series titled “Hidden Gems,” which highlighted lesser-known artefacts and features within the Cathedral. The intention was to spark curiosity and drive footfall during a quieter month.
While the original concept for this series was video-based, a last-minute change in capacity led me to pivot to static image carousels. This pivot proved highly effective.
I originally intended to produce both the videos and carousels, and so to fill the gaps in the social media calendar, I studied the piece of content adjacent promoting the Christmas Light Show.
This piece became the most successful post of the entire period in terms of reach, and while the Light Show typically generates strong engagement, the content stood out with smooth camera movement, rich colour grading, and a carefully chosen trending audio.
I then applied this approach across additional content to increase reach with simple and time-efficient content, resulting in the brief series colloquially known as "the eye-candy reels" amongst my colleagues.
Both the reels and carousels performed exceptionally.
One post, spotlighting the Lichfield Angel, became the third-highest performing post of the entire campaign when measured by engagement. The series also acted as a useful lead-in to the Silk Roads Talk, which ran later that month and benefited from the residual interest and increased reach generated by the content over this period.
II. DESIGN
To establish the distinctive and emotionally resonant visual identity, I began by exploring current design trends and assembling a comprehensive moodboard. The final aesthetic drew inspiration from vintage travel and holiday posters, using halftone textures and enduring serif typefaces such as Garamond, and always remaining within the Cathedral’s brand guidelines.
To harmonise with the theme of community and togetherness, I made use of rich reds, deep blues and earthy tones, complementing the textured effects and reinforcing the feelings of warmth and nostalgia.
The result was a design language that felt both classic and comforting, and that prompted unsolicited positive feedback from visitors and staff alike throughout the Advent period.
For the A5 bi-fold leaflet, I focused on usability. Recognising the wide range of audience segments, I structured the leaflet with clear chronological listings and developed a key to help visitors quickly identify the events most relevant to them. This approach drew on Hick’s Law to reduce decision fatigue and create a smoother user experience.
IV. DELIVERY & PERFOMANCE
When measuring performance, I discovered that my dataset for the period was skewed due to a change in legislation requiring an update to the Cathedral’s cookie policy. This led to shifts in user cookie preferences, rendering all data except for bounce rate unusable.
However, when comparing the reach of content for the period to the previous year, Facebook reach nearly doubled and Instagram reach increased by 84.5%.
Despite this, social platform analytics told a compelling story. Facebook reach nearly doubled compared to the previous year, and Instagram saw an 84.5 percent increase. Attendance at key events rose significantly. Services directly featured in the soft-sell video content, such as the Christmas Day Eucharist, saw attendance increase by 37.3 percent. Midnight Mass rose by 32.4 percent, and the Advent Carol Service increased by 20 percent.
Of the four key services analysed, three showed statistically significant increases in attendance when modelled as a Poisson Distribution, suggesting a strong and likely causal relationship between the campaign and the uplift in turnout.
In addition, The Silk Roads Talk in January also performed exceptionally well, underscoring the lasting impact of the winter campaign and suggesting that the digital engagement strategies used were effective in driving broader Cathedral engagement well beyond the festive period. You can read more about that here.
