British Heart Foundation — Turning Creativity into a Lifesaving Force

British Heart Foundation (BHF) wants the world to know that it is a charity that helps fundraise lifesaving cardiovascular research  and preventative measures. 

In the five years since Claire Sadler, chief marketing and fundraising officer, joined from Direct Line Group — and swiftly appointed Saatchi & Saatchi to lead its integrated fundraising and brand marketing — BHF has been on a creative roll, earning attention and acclaim for a range of initiatives from films to football fan murals, and now public-space benches that honour cardiac survivors while increasing relevance to unaware audiences. 

“The journey we have been on is one of making the brand more important in people's lives. You always want to understand the role that your brand plays in people's lives and heart disease is the world's biggest killer. It kills more people than cancer and strokes put together, yet probably the general public would see cancer as the biggest concern to them,” states Sadler. She recognises that creativity has been pivotal to that strategy, overusing the typical emotional ad techniques the charity sector widely uses. 

Growing awareness of its research work to save lives and drive donations has been a pivotal focus while differentiating it from other charities in people’s minds. “It's about relevance, specificity, urgency and importance of the cause,” she adds. 

A Benchmark campaign

In the final weeks of 2025, ahead of its 65th anniversary, BHF released its latest eye-catching campaign, ‘In Living Memory’, which celebrated 65 survivors whose lives have been saved by critical BHF-funded research. Front and centre were the placement of 65 commemorative BHF-red painted benches nationwide, which will become permanent fixtures in their communities.

The campaign followed 2024’s ‘Til I Died’ work which focused on highlighting the tales of young England and Scotland footballers who had succumbed to heart disease, running during the FIFA European Championships. 

“There is a perception gap about this being the world's biggest killer versus some of those other causes, so we knew we had to close that gap,” underlines Claire Hollands, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi. “One of the things that was very successful in the ‘Til I Died’ campaign was that it hit home the fact that this can happen to anybody at any age, and that's a really important part of the message.”

To follow that and celebrate the 65th anniversary, the team were keen to visually underline the research work by the charity as well as the burden of the disease carried by survivors. 

Sadler is adamant that the campaigns produced by BHF are “engaging” and “compelling” as she recognises how “dry” the topic can be without a strong creative edge. Ideas that cut through are hugely important to her and are what Saatchi & Saatchi has been delivering. 

“We always plan and deliver our campaigns in an integrated way. We think about how an idea will work across paid, owned, and earned, which is fundamental and critical to the way that we go to market. And you can see that both in terms of the paid advertising, which is out there, but also how that has driven shared content and earned content as well as PR coverage,” she continues. 

The campaign features survivors sharing their experiences without a script. The red benches they all sit on became the ‘visual glue’ where these stories would be told and brought to life. 

“It's a brilliant human storytelling device, which allows us to tell not just the stories of patients, but we've also got content with our researchers talking about their work or in conversation with the patient. So, there's some real flexibility and longevity there in terms of it being a very useful creative vehicle to tell lots of different types of stories,” says Sadler. 

Hollands adds that the benches are a twist on traditional memorial benches, with the traditional plaques which often read ‘In Loving Memory’ instead dedicated to people who are still alive, thanks to the lifesaving research the BHF funds. 

To source the stories represented by each bench, Saatchi & Saatchi collaborated with Raw Research and BHF’s Heart Stories team to identify survivors. With local councils approached and permission secured, each bench was then placed near their communities in everyday settings such as town centres and parks to share their specific story. 

“These are real people having genuine conversations that they hadn't probably had until they sat on that bench and really told their loved ones what they thought. It’s a very special thing to be part of and I know our team are exceptionally proud of the work that's been created,” says Hollands. 

The pair admit that it was an ambitious commitment to find and tell 65 individual stories from across the country, but they were fully committed to doing so. 

Another element of the campaign was the ‘Keep Us Beating’ platform that was also introduced to fund raise to support the organisation’s ongoing research.  

Sadler says the play on words is about “continuity and consistency,” as BHF  continues to seek donations. “There's a really nice platform there in terms of longevity that works across all of the things that BHF does. Because we're a retailer too - we're one of the biggest high street retailers. And we're also a fundraising organisation. So it works across all of those areas of our organisation.”

Heart Stories

The Heart Stories team also played a vital role in the research and sourcing element of the campaign’s six month development. 

It acts as a bridge between patients, BHF-funded research, and the organisation’s marketing and fundraising work. The team identifies powerful real-life patient stories, builds and manages sensitive relationships with people living with serious or ongoing heart conditions, and supports them through the emotional process of sharing their experiences. 

Working closely with the news/PR team, the brand team, and Saatchi & Saatchi, it ensures that patients are cared for throughout production — especially as they are not actors — creating an environment where individuals feel safe, supported and able to speak openly on camera.

“We want to feature real stories, real people who are sometimes quite sick with often very serious heart conditions. So that team is that conduit of finding the story, managing the relationship with those patients… they are our customers,” explains Sadler. 

With a plan to run for 18 months, within the first three months of activation the ‘In Living Memory’ campaign has already produced over 275 assets across AV, Radio, Social, Press, Digital and OOH. 

So far, Sadler reveals, the charity has seen an ‘upward trajectory’ for donations year-on-year; “We're pleased with that in terms of the performance across owned, earned and paid media, that's been incredibly strong and testament to how the idea stretches across channels.”