One year ago, the RSN had to close its doors due to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Marketing Manager, Bryna Black, explains how the RSN adapted its messaging, campaigns and initiatives during this difficult time.

“During the first lockdown, April to June, I was working from home and the rest of the team were furloughed.  The marketing focus had to turn to purely digital communication, with the advertising budgets cut.  My key objective was to be in continual contact with our audience across RSN social media platforms and through more regular emailings.  As we are so close to our community, the priority was to produce the monthly eNews every week, to bring the RSN in to people’s homes during a time when society was feeling isolated, and these continued over three months.

During an uncertain period, storytelling is so very important, especially positive, interesting news which we wanted to bring to our community.  We included history of the RSN, selected RSN Archive Collection pieces to discuss, opened the doors to our Embroidery Studio commissions, as well as launching two campaigns to inspire people to work on special projects from home.  The first was the ‘RSN Postcard From Home’, encouraging everyone from around the world to feel connected through our universal love of hand embroidery and thinking about what ‘home’ meant to them, a project which continues.

Over the last year, the world acknowledged the tireless hard work of their health services, the ‘National Health Service’ in the UK.  In mid-April, Third Year Degree Student, Lucy Martin, led the ‘NHS Embroidered Heart Challenge’, where people were encouraged to embroider ‘NHS’ within a heart, to hang in their windows. Within a few days, Lucy was interviewed by two radio stations, with press to follow. An amazing 220 completed Hearts were shared with us!

The active team were so grateful for the heartfelt messages we received in response to our eNews during those first three months, and this was an important factor in driving us on with passion to launch our Online Class offering so quickly.

The RSN’s audience has grown substantially over the last year and digital marketing, content and engagement has played an important role in the marketing mix. The audiences on our social channels have grown, in particular Instagram by 40% – people have had more time at home to discover new accounts whilst exploring new hobbies.  I am always keen that the RSN keeps up with the new features offered on these channels.  So, I persuaded our Chief Executive, Dr Susan Kay-Williams, to host our first Instagram Live in June, which has had nearly 4k views.

Our online community has been truly wonderful.  It makes me smile when I see our followers, who I know live on opposite sides of the world, discussing a social media post, have perhaps attended Online Classes together or recognise each other’s names through the RSN channels, but have never actually met!  Their engagement is extremely valuable as it not only influences the platforms in showing our posts to a wider audience, which in turn expands our following, but it has also had an influence and impact on the RSN’s recent online development.

Last April, we could see that regular attendee students were eager to switch to Online Day Classes which we launched in May, teaching across different time zones to our growing international audience.  We took another big step in October launching RSN Collection Online Talks which have proven so successful that we have just launched our second season; we have welcomed over 3,000 attendees from 34 countries!

Due to Covid-19, all on site exhibitions have been cancelled for now, which has impacted the events we usually organise to showcase our students’ work.  In summer 2020, our Graduates would normally have displayed their Final Major Projects at a variety of exhibitions but, as this was not possible, we featured them in our eNews with a dedicated Gallery on our website, including case studies.  This, in fact, meant that Graduates’ work was reaching a much wider and international audience than ever before and, due to its success, we also featured our Certificate & Diploma Graduates.  The Gallery pages have opened up our courses to potential students who can now browse 2020 final project work online, which they would normally have had to attend an event to view.

In November, the annual ‘Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery’ Awards Evening went online and we celebrated the achievements of seven Future Tutor and Degree students, with four of them winning prizes.  We are so proud of our Degree student awards and success stories, that we have highlighted them on a dedicated page which we will add to in the future.

The last 12 months have flown by, and when I look back at what the small RSN team has achieved across all departments, I am so proud to be part of our growth and really look forward to seeing our new marketing initiatives have an impact over the coming years.  Doors are also beginning to open up, and I am currently working on four public events happening over the next seven months. We keep our fingers crossed that they will go ahead.  Finally, we have our 150th anniversary celebrations to look forward to, which will launch in September, so there are exciting and positive times ahead!”

Images:  Postcard From Home by Aylén from Argentina and Lesley from Kingston, UK; Marketing Manager Bryna Black; NHS Hearts.