It’s certainly been a busy week for us here at Advocates for Animals, and what an exciting time! We took the OneKind campaign out on the road for the first time this weekend, to Scotland’s first ever Girls’ Day Out event at the Glasgow SECC, and what a fantastic response we had.
The idea of 15,000 women all together in an exhibition hall packed with high fashion, hair, handbags and general hilarity was enough to fill our male staff members with a mix of fear, fascination and bewilderment. But for us girls, it was a great opportunity to stick on lashings of extra (animal-friendly) slap, fashion our own personalised OneKind tees (http://onekind.spreadshirt.co.uk/) and sing out for OneKind living!
We rolled out some brand new banners, showing off the new logo with bright colours and a gorgeous range of animal pictures, and I have to say it really did look very eye-catching and appealing. But I think what really drew in the crowds were our mini shopping bags – thousands of these cute, funky little bags were snapped up, each containing our leaflet to get the OneKind message out there. They were so popular that the Clarins girls even wanted to take a bunch of them to package their gifts! (We politely declined).
And then there was the prize draw. Drawing attention to our primary reason for being at Girls’ Day Out, which was promoting OneKind lifestyle, a whole host of animal-friendly companies very generously donated some fantastic gifts, and all the ladies had to do was fill out one of our little ‘Barney the guinea pig’ postcards to enter. Top prize was a two-night stay at our favourite vegetarian hotel, Lancrigg, a beautiful country house set in the heart of the Lake District. Then there was an outstanding box of products from Saaf, worth over £220. Also to be won were meals for two at both Black Bo’s restaurant in Edinburgh and Mono restaurant in Glasgow, two hair experiences at Emma Hall Hair Design (we love Emma!) and fabulous gifts from Raw Gaia, Booja Booja, Skin Blossom, Plamil and Barry M.
Naturally, all these prizes, together with our ‘best bag to be seen with at the event’, drew in thousands of women and we were, quite frankly, mobbed for most of the weekend! OneKind shopping bags were swinging and Barney postcards were flying as gaggles of fabulous ladies came forward to show their love and support for our animal friends. The aforementioned Advocates for Animals staff of the male variety claimed to be feeling somewhat intimidated – I don’t believe a word, they were clearly enjoying every minute...
So now it’s back to Edinburgh and on to rolling out our exciting OneKind media campaign. The lovely Alesha Dixon is fronting the first wave of ads: keep your eyes peeled! In the meantime, enjoy exploring the new website and keep watching this space.
Thank you so much to all the staff and volunteers (Debbie, Viv, Jill and Mairi) who took time out from their weekends to work their socks off for us.
All the best, Heléna