The Feather Speech

Our project to save the Swifts

The Aim

To create a new UK law, ensuring all new houses are built with swift bricks by default, creating new homes for swifts, housemartins and more

Audience

UK Government
Reach
c.12.6m
Engagement
c.245,000

Outcomes

  • Our unique stunt captured the imagination of the media
  • United right and left-leaning media behind the campaign
  • Supported by Conservatives, Labour, Green and Lib Dem parties
  • Featured in Daily Mail, Piers Morgan, BBC News and more
  • Supported by Piers Morgan, Jeremy Clarkson, Caroline Lucas and hundreds more
  • 110k+ petition signatures on Gov website
  • Debated in Parliament and delivered to Number 10 Downing Street

Links

Joining forces with a real force for nature – Hannah Bourne-Taylor

Hannah Bourne-Taylor is the incredible author, activist and spokesperson behind The Feather Speech. She’d been working hard to gain attention to her swift brick campaign, but really wanted to reach outside the traditional bird-loving audiences so her petition on Gov.uk could reach the required 100,000 signatures needed to be debated in parliament.

Creating the hook

We worked a lot with Hannah to come up with the concept of body painting her as the embodiment or spirit of birds. We worked with the incredibly Guido Daniele and helped create the iconic look that provided the media hook needed.

Uniting right and left-leaning politics

We knew that to get enough signatures and groundswell of support, we’d need to not just appeal to the “normal” environmental groups, but also to the people who normally would be turned off, or even resistant, to the cause. To that end, we devised a campaign that was designed to feel less “worthy” and more akin to an 80’s or 90’s campaign (that we knew our target audience would resonate with).

Using public support to push through policy change

Once we had over 100k signatures, we then turned to a traditional media campaign to build a groundswell of public passion that was supported by everyday people, activists, local environmental groups, national NGOs and even Jeremy Clarkson. This helped push our story in the media, leading to the debate in Westminster, and the delivery of the policy change request to Number 10 Downing Street, as featured on ITV News.