Saints Foundation Strategy - Support Southampton

Saints Foundation are great clients to work with and we love telling their incredible stories. This time, the Foundation wanted an opportunity to outline their strategy for the coming years that builds on their 20 years of life-changing work in Southampton.

We created a short video that introduced the key focuses of the Foundation - Health, Education, Gender Equality, Employability and Pathways. Using a small crew on four mini-shoots, we travelled across the city to give a flavour of the variety of ways the community is benefitting from the support of the Foundation - and the plans going forward. It was great to work with Saints players new and old, including Theo Walcott, Kayla Rendell, James Beattie and Francis Benali MBE. We helped create the script delivered by Kenzi Benali that brought the film together. We’re very fortunate to have such a brilliant charity supporting our hometown.

Saints Foundation - Senior Saints - Chris' Story

The Saints Foundation do incredible work in the community and our latest film highlights the impact the ‘Senior Saints’ has on the older generation’s lives. Here we tell Chris Thompson’s story, a lady who has had her life transformed by the Senior Saints group. Where previously she was self conscious about going out, she has now found her confidence and enjoyment in life - a place where she can be accepted, have fun and not have to worry financially. You can see the sheer joy the Saints Foundation bring and we are delighted to be able to share Chris’ story here - and spread a little heartwarming cheer!

Iwan Thomas - Group Strep B Awareness film

We’ve done lots of work with Olympic athlete, Iwan Thomas in the past, and he is a good friend of Bullet. He went through an emotional experience with the birth of his son, Teddy, who contracted Group B Strep during labour. He benefited from the support of the charity, Group B Strep Support (GBSS), who asked us to tell his story to help raise awareness of the condition and the charity. Group B Streptococcus is the UK's most common cause of life-threatening infection in newborn babies, and of meningitis in babies under age 3 months.

Please watch the film - it’s an incredibly emotional story and we were honoured to be able to share it.

Saints Foundation case study - Ellie

As part of the 20-year celebrations for the work Saints Foundation has done in the community, we had the privilege of telling 13-year-old Ellie’s story for the charity. As a key role model for younger players, we interviewed Ellie for a morning at one of her SaintsAbility sessions to find out how the Foundation had helped her defy her disabilities and gain confidence to become a skilled football player, despite challenges with her hearing and balance.

She was a delight to work with and was an inspiration to us all. In addition to the case study, we used this opportunity to shoot an advert for an upcoming charity walk, sponsored by Southampton Football Club’s partner, Vitality.

Advert for the Vitality Walk featuring Ellie’s story.

Ellie’s story - 3 minutes

Saints Foundation Charity Matchday with Sportsbet.io

Saints Foundation wanted to shine a light on their work in the community in the build-up to their charity matchday on Easter Sunday - Southampton v Burnley. They asked Bullet to produce two films to help raise their profile ahead of the match.

The first highlights the story of Michael - a 35 year old who was born with mild cerebral palsy and has enjoyed many amazing experiences since joining the SaintsAbility programme. We used footage from previous Saints Foundations shoots and interviewed him remotely to use his narrative to tell the story.

The second film features Saints Foundation Ambassador, Franny Benali to highlight of all the great work the Foundation have been doing in the community and to encourage people to donate £10 in place of the money they would usually spend on a match ticket. The club’s main sponsor, Sportsbet.io are behind this opportunity and as well as donating their shirt sponsorship, Sportsbet.io have agreed to donate up to £10,000 to the charity by matching donations made in the build-up to the game.

These films were both shot in a couple of hours with a quick turnaround to be ready in time for the campaign.

Michael’s story

Charity Matchday with Franny Benali

Saints Foundation - keeping the senior saints walking

Saints Foundation has provided an invaluable lifeline for their older adult participants who have found themselves isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic. As part of our ongoing promotional work for the Foundation, we created a series of videos demonstrating the activities the Senior Saints have experienced, in order to showcase the charity’s work. This particular film tells Margaret’s story about how the Foundation have helped her stay active and engaged through accompanied walks in the local Southampton parks, without which she would have felt very alone. See the full story on Southampton FC’s website here: https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2020-11-07/saints-foundation-margarets-story

Saints as One - an award winning campaign

We’re very proud to hear that Saints As One - a joint campaign with Southampton Football Club and Saints Foundation launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic - has won the Leaders in Sports Community Award.

Bullet created a social media video to promote the campaign using existing footage, celebrating what the team had been doing in lockdown to support those who were isolated and vulnerable around Southampton. This video helped capture the attention of Leaders and Facebook, who were searching for a project that tackles a social problem in a practical way, reducing barriers between people or groups and creating a lasting platform for positive engagement - and Saints As One stood out as a winning contender.

The campaign saw the club reaching out to fans through a range of initiatives, including club staff making over 4,000 calls to Season Ticket holders over 65, Saints Foundation delivering over 2,000 prescriptions to those most in need across the city, as well as staff volunteering 1,700 hours of their time to cook and distribute 13,000 meals in the local area. 

We were delighted to be able to support the Foundation with their campaign and excellent work they do in the community and it’s great to see their efforts recognised.

Lighthouse Poole - engaging young people during lockdown

The arts is a sector that has particularly suffered during lockdown, with many venues remaining closed for the foreseeable future. However, instead of falling silent, the Lighthouse Poole has been active in keeping the spirit alive and producing engaging online content that inspires their audience. We were delighted to be involved in a project to support this goal - filming a series of fun online workshop to encourage people to write their own bedtime story.

The project involved three films, working with the Black Cherry Theatre Company, offering tips and tools to help viewers think about their characters, focus on story structure and fun exercises to help with improvisation. The ultimate aim was to get people engaged in creative activities at home, with a competition to submit a completed story later in the month.

This is a great example of a company using video to keep front of mind with its audience, even though normal operations are unable to resume at present. It keeps the momentum going, which will help to encourage customer support once the venue is able to open again.

Workshop 1 - characters

Workshop 2 - story structure

Workshop 3 - improvised storytelling