tBT Strategy

Kate & Helen Richardson-Walsh - Authentic Achievement

Educate & Ideate
Activate & Implement
What they wanted

Olympic Hockey gold medallists Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh wanted to deliver real impact around the causes they care about, while at the same time building their profile and credibly approaching and forming partnerships with brands that share the same values.

What we did

We ran a series of workshops for Kate and Helen to drill down on their values and to identify the causes they truly care about and what impact they wanted to achieve. Thorough this we identified anti-stereotyping, female leadership, mental health and LGBTQ+ as their key themes. This was underpinned by their experiences as women at the top of their profession, as an LGBT couple, as individuals who had experienced mental health problems and as sports people who saw the power of diverse teams working together.

Taking these as our inspiration we created two distinct but complimentary strands for Kate and Helen – the importance of valuing yourself and your own unique strengths, and the importance of valuing and accepting others no matter who they are. Taking these together we developed the message of Authentic Achievement – a commitment towards creating a world where I can be me, you can be you, and we can all thrive.

We then created a strategy encompassing a range of channels and products that could disseminate the message towards a variety of audiences, helping Kate and Helen simultaneously raise their profile around these issues while also having impact in the areas they care about.

What happened

With a clear overarching narrative Kate and Helen were able to confidently reference their values and aims across their traditional and online media interactions, and we delivered sustained PR to grow their profile around these key themes. We also directed them towards a range of ambassadorial roles with charitable organisations that shared their cause focus and provided a vehicle for Kate and Helen to increase their profile around these issues.

To enable them to deliver the message at the grass roots we developed an authentic achievement workshop and curriculum to deliver in schools and sports clubs, and in the next phase of work we will engage global hockey and sports NGOs to develop hockey programming intertwined with authentic achievement education. Alongside this we continue to approach brands and corporates that share the same values as Kate and Helen and have developed a stream of speaking and ambassadorial work around the themes of diversity and inclusion, including the delivery of a corporate workshop offering.