Do you want a masterclass in cause marketing, fan engagement, and brand storytelling? It’s free and it’s happening right now, and we marketers and consumer brands could do a lot worse than adapt and emulate its brilliant example.
It’s The Archers, on BBC Radio 4. The cause is domestic abuse, specifically coercive control which became a crime in the UK on December 29th 2015. This week the BBC’s publicity machine has kicked in and broadsheet, tabloids, online news sites and social media all feature The Archers story and its real-life parallels. If none of these have reached you (how?) then here’s a great summary of the Rob and Helen story so far. Warning: it involves Helen’s young son, Henry, too. Very dark all round.
This week, fuelling the publicity, we are at the explosive inflexion point in the story.
Behind us are two years of Rob’s increasingly frightening bullying, manipulation, cold control, gaslighting, and physical violence including marital rape. All masked with exceptional sociopathic smoothness by his intense charm and outwardly loving care.
Ahead of us is Helen’s journey into acknowledging and accepting her disastrous marriage, her near breakdown, and that her baby due in a few weeks is the result of marital rape. She has been the victim and survivor of domestic abuse. And now she has to survive the legal system. In Sunday evening’s episode Rob handed Helen a knife, told her he owned her and told her to kill herself. Helen instead used the knife on her tormentor, provoked finally to defend her son. She stabbed the bastard (sorry, I’m pretty invested in The Archers, I’ve been listening since birth) to the collective gasps of all listeners. Now Helen faces the police investigation. How do you even explain the subtle hell of coercive control and gaslighting? I don’t know. We’ll find out over the next few months.
The noise you heard at 7.15pm last Sunday was the sound of five million jaws hitting the floor, then the tapping out of tens of thousands of tweets.
Fan/listener engagement is not new, it has long been a strength of The Archers. The original message board – one of the very first on the BBC website – was closed in 2013 and Twitter and Facebook are now the platforms for The Archers’ community. Twitter is my natural habitat and it works brilliantly for The Archers too. The Sunday morning omnibus tweetalongs are fabulous and I strongly recommend following #TheArchers on Twitter between 10am and 11.15am UK time on Sundays. Funny, life affirming and insightful.
The Archers Rob and Helen story, and the brand’s powerful fan engagement, led to one exceptional man, Paul Trueman, setting up “The Helen Titchener (nee Archer) Rescue Fund” on JustGiving.com to raise money for Refuge to support real-life Helens. Cleverly switching comms from Sunday evening to become ‘the Helen Titchener legal fund’. Listeners have already raised well over £100,000. Please donate if you can, and click the Gift Aid button if you’re a UK resident because it adds 25% to your donation.
Survivors of domestic abuse have been reliving their hells through The Archers too. God knows this story must be traumatic and cathartic and frightening and so much else. I can’t do better than to link to two articles by Helen Walmsley-Johnson in New Statesman and The Pool both of which have been shared widely on social media by The Archers fans.
In a world where ‘news’ too often derives from whatever’s trending on Twitter, and is usually the poorer for it, we have a news story that began on social and is productively driving the agenda of raising awareness of domestic abuse. This horror has long been hidden and swept under the carpet is now being amplified beyond The Archers’ listeners, beyond their Twitter followers and Facebook fans and into mass media. I can only stand and applaud the editors, scriptwriters, actors and the rest of The Archers team.
Listeners are already redeploying #FreeTheAmbridgeOne, formerly a listener-driven campaign for another character, Susan Carter, in 1994. In 2016 we have Twitter to hashtag it and democratise the message.
And that’s the point here really. This isn’t new, the fan and listener engagement that The Archers does so well. It is a brand that has told its story since 1951 with purpose, vision and brilliance (with occasional lapses of course, we all have our nadirs). That purpose was originally a collaboration with the old Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (now the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA) to entertain whilst communicating and educating famers and small-holders on best practice in farming, following the Second World War and the resultant food shortages.
That ‘communication and education through entertainment’ brief has developed over the last 65 years, as has the United Kingdom. Farming has changed, in many ways beyond the recognition of The Archers’ early farming characters. The UK, and The Archers’ stories in parallel, has been informed and transformed by social and economic change including mass use of chemicals in farming, sustainability and anti-GMO, the skewing effect of EU and state subsidies and grants, immigration, racism, flooding, homelessness, and and and – actually I’ve got so many micro and macro socio-economic happenings scribbled here in my notebook that it’s ridiculously disproportionate to pick out just these. Now domestic abuse.
And whilst rural communities and landscapes still have farming at their heart, these socio-economic changes in the countryside have dramatically changed rural jobs, rural journeys, rural businesses and rural people.
As the countryside and British society has changed, so much has changed for The Archers and its storylines. But what has never changed for this great British brand is its storytelling: it remains authentic, provocative, relevant, thoughtful, entertaining and educational.
So here we are, in 2016, with the story of an ex-manager of a mega dairy turned family farm shop manager (Rob Titchener) who is abusing his wife, a cheese-making farmers’ daughter (Helen Titchener) and her five year old son, Henry.
The Archers is attracting new listeners (bit early for this week’s figures but I’ll stick my neck out and say it has to be up 10% minimum, surely?). Deepening the addiction for us regular listeners. Inspiring listeners to donate over £100,000 (and rising) for Refuge for real-life Helens. Raising awareness of the terrible insidious crime of domestic abuse. A 20% increase in calls to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline, ‘in part down to the ‘Archers’ effect’,” according to Polly Neate, CEO of Women’s Aid.
The Rob and Helen story exemplifies The Archers brand at its absolute best. It is authentic, provocative, relevant, thoughtful, entertaining and educational.
Please donate to The Helen Titchener (nee Archer) Rescue Fund and support of Refuge.
Domestic abuse information, help and support http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3FQFSnx6SZWsQn3TJYYlFNy/information-and-support-domestic-abuse
The Archers synopses and catch up on all available episodes.
The Archers Twitter and Facebook pages.
*huge round of applause for Louiza Patikas (Helen), Timothy Watson (Rob), the whole production, editorial and scriptwriting teams*
tarablueskyblog 
It’s called rape, there’s nothing marital about it.
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You’re right and I agree. I used the term marital rape to be clear in the paragraph about who his victim was, that it was an attack on his wife and not a stranger to the story.
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From a brand marketing point of view, I believe credit should also be given to the moderators of the Facebook page and on Twitter. The “Mustardland” board on the BBC site was shut down because it had become a pit of vipers, full of bullying and cliques, a common problem in fandom. The Facebook Archers Page moderator(s) have actively managed the hurly-burly there very effectively, with firmness but also with good humor. Twitter, of course, is more of a free-for-all, but again the @BBCTheArchers Twitter handle does a good job directing and steering discussion by tweeting quotes from the day’s episode for people to respond to.
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Yep, completely agree. The whole team is doing a fantastic job and it’s a pleasure to interact with everyone involved.
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