Royal Navy personnel and veterans who give back to the community are the focus of a new media campaign across the UK.
Aired at locations nationwide – starting with the gigantic digital billboard dominating London’s Piccadilly Circus on Saturday afternoon – the campaign highlights the sense of duty shared by sailors, Royal Marines and veterans.
Called ‘A Celebration of Duty’, the campaign has been developed jointly with London-based independent creative agency Hijinks Collective in collaboration with the Royal Navy’s communications team.
The campaign launches in Piccadilly Circus on Saturday 18th November with a film starring serving personnel and veterans who feature in the campaign. The film will also roll out at cinemas and indoor/outdoor advertising spaces across the country.
One of the Navy personnel featured is Dr Imogen Napper, a marine conservationist and lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserves. The 31-year-old Bristolian works with National Geographic and Plymouth University researching the impact of plastic pollution around the world and her PHD research was instrumental in the ban on microplastics in cosmetics to help clean up our oceans.
Another story featured is that of a former Royal Marine Captain who now goes by the stage name of Tip Cullen. Tip, 55, originally from Belfast but now based in the South West, served for 30 years before re-training as an actor and now works closely with the Soldiers Arts Academy giving serving and former military personnel a route into the arts.
And 53-year-old Colour Sergeant Mike Beaton from Torquay – known to thousands of social media users as the Commando Chef – is driven to educate young people against knife crime, hosting free cooking classes up and down the country with the catchphrase: “Knives in the kitchen and not on the streets”.
Individual films about each person starring in the campaign will be featured here when the campaign goes live.