2023 Gold Copywriting

Agency: RAPP

Client: Back Up

Campaign Name: Spinal Stories

Campaign Overview

In the UK, it's estimated someone is diagnosed with a spinal cord injury every four hours. Back Up is a charity that inspires those affected to get the most out of life. It wanted to raise awareness of supporting sufferers to gain the skills, confidence, and experiences to live life to the fullest.

Strategy

One thing constantly stood out: every person with a spinal cord injury has a unique story, and many were happy to share to benefit and inspire others.

Back Up’s mentoring programme and support lounges are testament to this. It helps connect hundreds of people with mentors each year, with 85% of people involved reporting an improvement in their coping strategies. Meanwhile, online support lounges were visited by nearly 1,000 people in the past year, showing that sharing experiences is a great way to help people.

RAPP saw value in telling newly injured people there are others who understand and can help them with what they’re going through. Empathy was a key challenge.

Creativity

Four people shared their very different stories. Work told of the incident, life before and the positive impact Back Up’s work has had on their lives.

Crafting each story into 24 copy blocks—mirroring humans’ 24 vertebrae—they were typeset to form the shape of a spine. Where the injury occurs in the story was aligned with the relevant vertebra, graphically treating it to represent the injury.

Finally, the team turned the sacrum and coccyx into a call to action, leading readers to Back Up’s website where they could reach out and access online resources.

The approach built a stronger, more powerful connection between the copy and design. The work was strategically placed in 11 dedicated spinal centres across the UK, reaching a very small audience directly.

Results

The work is playing a key part in helping Back Up promote courses and fulfil its Transforming Lives strategy by 2025, and build on the 13,000-plus people who accessed in-person and/or digital resources in the past year; the 184 people who connected with mentors; and 130 family members who also accessed support.

The Team

RAPP - Nick Roberts, Associate Design Director - Al Mackie, Chief Creative Officer - Jack McSwiney, Copywriter - Cindy Ho, Creative - Jason Cascarina, Deputy Executive Creative Director - Hiten Bhatt, Head of Design - Amelia Bell, Junior Designer - Caroline Parkes, Chief Strategy Officer