Creative agency Milk & Tweed donates website to help national loneliness project increase its reach

A NATIONAL campaign to tackle loneliness among young adults has been supported by creative agency Milk & Tweed, which donated its time and expertise to build it a website.

#TheLonelyMillion is a campaign to highlight chronic loneliness among the one million – around one in ten  – young adults aged between 20 and 34 in the UK.

The campaign is being run by The Great Friendship Project, a non-profit organisation which tackles loneliness through research, campaigns and community activities.

The organisation needed a campaigning platform to help engage with politicians, charities and youth organisations and build support, and the Wiltshire agency stepped in to help.

“Milk & Tweed have been amazing, we have an incredibly tight marketing budget and we struggle to get the funding for this kind of outreach,” said founder David Gradon. “To be able to have their expertise and know-how to build a really user friendly site and help us with the content creation and site structure, as well as give us the physical time, was really valuable.”

The new site features some hard-hitting facts on the prevalence of loneliness and explainers on the root causes and symptoms of loneliness, how it can affect physical and mental health and how to help. There are also stories of real-life experiences of loneliness and ways to get involved with the campaign.

The most interactive element is a self-assessment section where users answer a series of questions about themselves that lead to tailored advice.

“Milk & Tweed really helped us with the self-assessment section because we didn’t even know if it was possible,” said Mr Gradon. “It’s not just a blanket form, it has to be reactive and it also captures data so it is extremely useful.”

As part of the wider campaign and its partnership with JCDecaux, the campaign was featured on billboards across the UK, receiving over 40 million impressions over the winter months.

It has already led to a range of partnership opportunities and closer working with other charities involved in loneliness campaigns, such as Age UK and Campaign To End Loneliness, as well as work with an All Party Parliamentary Group looking to address loneliness at a policy level.

“We’ve had really positive feedback from partners and we have had so many people saying ‘I love this new campaign, I’ve seen it everywhere and the site looks great’,” said Mr Gradon. “We’re trying to change people’s perceptions of people who struggle with loneliness, highlight the prevalence of it and provide a constant source of inspiration and support.”

“Because of the site we’ve had a number of people who’ve come through the campaign and put their name forward to be ambassadors and we’re finalising those in the coming weeks.”

He said Milk & Tweed, which is based in Chippenham and Brighton and specialises in web and brand design and digital marketing, has helped keep the project on track.

“It felt like having more team members on board and everyone was so helpful, particularly at the start,” he said. “They were really flexible as well in terms of evolving timescales, which does happen. As a small organisation, things come up and you have to move things around but they were always so supportive and we’re incredibly grateful and delighted with the outcome.”

Milk & Tweed Creative Director Jake Jeffries said: “As an agency we try to support good causes when we can and this one really resonated with us. We are a young workforce and are able to identify with what many young people go through but we were still shocked when we saw the numbers involved.

“It has been a really interesting and fulfilling project and we have been pleased to use our experience to help pull all of the elements in an engaging way.”

See the new website at thelonelymillion.co.uk and find out more about Milk & Tweed’s services at milkandtweed.com.