The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is taking a local approach ahead of its awareness building War Graves Week by encouraging people to search by postcode to discover those from their area who died in the First and Second World Wars.
The data-driven push, which was developed in partnership with M&C Saatchi, centres on a new online tool, also created by M&C, that enables people to calculate the nearest casualty to their postcode, displaying it in Google Street View, in a move designed to create an immediate, personal, local connection to the past.
Users can click through to learn more about the individuals, and download, print and display a commemorative tribute in their windows for War Graves Week.
Built by M&KE, M&C’s creative technology team, the project was all the more challenging because many of the 1.7 million people commemorated by the Commission do not have accurate address data, and none of them had postcode information.
To overcome this, the team had to create a duplicate database, cleaning address data and querying Google Maps over half a million times to establish postcodes they could convert to exact latitude and longitude, to pin to the front of buildings (many of which no longer exist) in Street View.
In order to generate word-of-mouth and maximise engagement across key locations for the launch of the tool, the Commission and M&C are also sending out 24 postcards from people who died in the First and Second World Wars to the residents of the streets that they used to live on.
Handwritten and with art direction in the style of notes home of the period, the postcards feature 24 casualties, all of whom are buried or commemorated in the local areas where they lived, selected so that the people who live on the streets can pay them a visit.
This is supported by a paid social campaign to drive traffic to the Commission’s website, encouraging people to discover “who lived on your street?”. The campaign’s geo-targeted media strategy employs localised creative across key locations where War Graves Week events are taking place.
During the week itself, the Commission will be encouraging people to join digital events livestreamed globally on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the organisation’s own intranet. It will also invite people to visit the seven War Graves Commission locations where events will take place each day during War Graves Week: Brookwood, Runnymede, Cambridge, Plymouth, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Harrogate.
War Graves Commission director of information and communication Liz Woodfield said: “The aim of this campaign is to establish War Graves Week as an annual event highlighting the stories of the people we commemorate in their local communities.
“We want to create a connection with the Commission among a generation who may not already be aware of us, by rooting our work in the communities where we operate. We would invite anyone and everyone who might be curious to go online and find out more about those who lived on their street and died in the two World Wars.”
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