We were asked by St John Hospice in Antigua to help them with their social media communication. The team consisted mainly of volunteers who were busy working in the two thrift shops; selling donated items and all proceeds went into running the Hospice.
We spent time at the Hospice, the peaceful gardens and the two stores in order to better understand the work of the Hospice and the reality that it is run entirely on donations from very kind people.
We started by elevating the shops through the posts on Facebook to create a retail environment; a place where people would want to browse and perhaps arrive with a distinct item in mind that they had seen advertised. We photographed many of the shop items in appealing settings – waterside, lush backdrops etc. We also grouped items together that could be bought by one person; a baseball cap, jeans and sneakers, for example.
We also began a campaign to encourage more donations; emphasizing the new or nearly new nature of the donations. We wanted a place for people to drop donations so that the trip into the main City would not be prohibitive to receiving these items. We started to talk about pick-ups and collections. This led us to identifying certain places round the island that would take a donation barrel. We created a STOP, DROP, DONATE branding that was distinctive and reflected the quality of the brand. We encouraged various businesses to accept a barrel.
We also upgraded the Facebook posts so that the information posts had a distinct look and feel:
Pre-Covid, we had the idea to create a stand-alone “business attire” area in one of the shops and call it “Styled for business, by St John Hospice”. This was to encourage a different audience to consider the Hospice shops as a place to buy gently-used, office wear or an outfit for an interview.
We also had the idea of “Donate a bauble” so that the Christmas tree in the actual Hospice was dressed beautifully for the Holiday Season; bringing joy to the residents.
