Soaring to safety


In the wake of tragedy, there is a quote from American TV personality Fred Rogers that often finds its way onto social media to offer comfort: ‘When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’
After the attack on Westminster in March, London’s Air Ambulance found itself being looked to. Journalist and activist Jack Monroe tweeted ‘If you want to do something tangible to help, text SAVE to 70800 to send £5 to Londons Air Ambulance - they rely entirely on donations.’
It’s a message that London’s Air Ambulance is keen to convey. ‘Our absolute key message is to try to communicate that we’re a charity,’ explains head of PR and communications Siobhra Murphy. ‘Generally, if someone has heard about London’s Air Ambulance, they understand it is something that is life-saving or any air ambulance but they associate it with something that is entirely Government funded. For us, trying to educate them that we’re a charity is our number one key message that we’d love people to take home.’
Social media plays an important part in that education process as well as providing a platform to raise funds. After the tragic events of Westminster, London’s Air Ambulance received around £50,000 in donations over a period of two weeks. ‘In a horrible time, everyone rallied around to do it,’ says Murphy. ‘Social media was one of the biggest drivers of that.’
The charity’s current audience is remarkably broad, ranging from journalists to medical professionals, existing supporters and new ones and its use of social media reflects the spectrum of people the Air Ambulance is trying to reach.
London’s Air Ambulance has accounts on Twitter, where @LDNairamb has more than 44,000 followers, Facebook, where it runs monthly caption competitions, giving supporters the chance to win replica models of the helicopter, and YouTube. After conducting brand research, it is looking to expand, creating more video and potentially an Instagram account, though Murphy notes that a strategy for the platform has to come first.
At the moment, social media is the jack of all trades for the charity. It is a research tool, a newsroom and a place to share content on what goes on within the organisation, whether it is tweeting live dispatches (albeit with a time-delay to ensure people don’t rush to the scene) or showing people what’s going on behind the scenes. ‘When our doctors, paramedics and pilots aren’t out helping to save lives on the streets of London, they are here, doing training, kit checks,’ explains Murphy. ‘What our teams would consider quite normal information, people find this insight really interesting.’
Murphy and her team try to give vital insight into the day-to-day workings of the London’s Air Ambulance, which treats an average of five seriously injured people every 24 hours.
Social media
allows London’s Air Ambulance to thank supporters, driving them to their
website where they might find opportunities to volunteer or donate, but also to
source pictures of locations where the helicopter has landed to tend an
incident and engage with the onlookers who took them.
‘We really want people to get to know our staff and what these guys are doing each day so they can gain an understanding of what the job is and what the charity does,’ says Murphy. ‘It’s really difficult to get across that we are a charity and then educate people about what we do, that we deliver the hospital to critically injured patients using the helicopter and cars, all at the same time’




