Intandem
Campaign
InTandem is Scotland’s national mentoring service for care experienced children age 8-14. It provides valuable support with a tried and tested system of matching caring adults with 2 hours a week to spare with young people, helping them to feel listened to and cared about through the stability of a grounded adult. The requirement was to attract people from all walks of life to become mentors.
Brief
Bold Studio were tasked with encouraging more adults to volunteer as mentors. The client faced an issue in that most target groups of potential mentors did not know what mentoring actually involves. This often leads to misunderstandings about the level of commitment required, the amount of training needed, and the types of activities they would be expected to undertake.
Approach
We conducted a focus group with existing mentors to gain insight - asking what factors contributed to them becoming a mentor, what barriers they faced, and what they would say to someone considering it now.
The findings informed a dedicated one-day campaign workshop with staff and stakeholders, during which we carried out a series of activities to identify which points to focus on and how best to communicate them. The key messages were that mentoring requires only a modest time commitment, that anyone can do it, and that it is highly rewarding and worthwhile. It was also highlighted that, for students of social studies, mentoring offers valuable insight into social life that can form an integral part of their future careers.
Challenges
The challenge was to create a campaign that showed the mutual benefits for both the mentors and the young people using the service. We had to be careful not to portray the users as having no one or being abandoned (which often isn’t the case) or to come across as patronising. We also needed to make it clear that you don’t need to have all the answers to be a mentor. This is a common misconception that puts people off, as many feel they need to be a trained social worker to get involved.
Solution
We developed a range of creative routes, each with its own focus and tone, and presented them to the client team. They chose a direction built around the message “Mentoring, It’s Just… [insert activity]” for example It’s just a walk, it’s just a chat, it’s just a game. This was paired with real-life photography of mentors and mentees, contrasting the modest, low-pressure nature of the activity with the huge impact it has on the young person, while also highlighting the genuine joy it brings to both sides.
A supporting message “But it’s the most fun I have all week” reinforced that these moments aren’t just meaningful for the young people, but often for the mentors too.
We then rolled out the creative across multiple channels, including posters, social posts and animated content. To help the client’s marketing team keep building on the campaign, we created a set of Canva templates so they could easily produce their own variations over time. The campaign has since been highly commended and is on track to recruit much-needed volunteer mentors across 21 key areas in Scotland.
Impact
"The campaign has only been active for 2 weeks, but we are already seeing increased volunteer numbers. Our partners and stakeholders have also responded positively to the new campaign, and have shared that they feel it's a great step forward for the programme."
- Sian McCluskey - Senior Communications Officer
