Marking 100 years since the start of WW1, 2014 presented a unique opportunity: to reaffirm the Legion’s mission as the UK’s leading Armed Forces charity and to re-frame what that means in 2014 and beyond.

The Royal British Legion has become synonymous over the years for their role at the very heart of remembrance, leading the nation in remembering the fallen. But now, 100 years after Britain embarked the war to end all wars, more than ever there is a need to reassert the vital work that the Legion does and re-frame its relevancy for modern times.

To mark the Centenary, a bold aim was established - to commemorate every one of the 1,117,077 men and women who died in WW1.

With the ambition to encourage the public to leave a commemorative message for every service man and woman who fell, our task was clear: encourage the nation to join the largest ever act of remembrance.

With our core objective firmly established on driving commemorations, we also wanted to use this opportunity to help generate income, in order to continue the vital work that The Royal British Legion delivers for servicemen and women, and their families.

With the aim to commemorate all of the 1,117,077 who died in WW1 by the end of the Centenary in 2018, these early results paint an overwhelmingly positive picture.

Within a fortnight of launch there had been over 25k commemorations left, £800k donations, and creative acclaim including Campaign’s Pick of the Week and number 2 in Campaign’s Top 10 Press Ads of 2014.

Now some 4 months into the campaign, we are ahead of forecast with 94k commemorations to date, not to mention just shy of £1.5 million funds raised.

Above and beyond our outlined campaign objectives, the campaign has successfully shone a spotlight on the RBL and engaged a whole new generation– with its central mission and values.

This can be seen by the volumes of visitors to the site, with over 75% being under 45, and the largest proportion aged 18-34, historically a hard-to-reach, disengaged audience (See Fig 4. & Fig 5 in supporting materials.)

This can further be seen in social responses, with individuals sharing on their own personal commemorations, encouraging others to follow suit; alongside praise for the campaign creative itself.

With just shy of 1500 mentions alone of Every Man Remembered on Twitter, those who fell during WW1 were successfully brought out of the history textbooks and bang up to date, as part of everyday conversations on social media.

Through partnering with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission we were able to tap into a vital pre-existing resource - their World War One casualty database.

The casualty database lists the names and place of commemoration of the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two world wars, with the facility to search by surname, date, war, rank, regiment, awards or any combination of those criteria.

Through partnering with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, we could form a strategic alliance which would allow us to provide a unique insight into the history of the war through our campaign creative.

Further, by tapping into such an extensive and comprehensive database, we were not only able to launch rapidly in market with a fully searchable and richly detailed site experience. But crucially beyond this, we have a pool of content that we can continue to surface up as the campaign continues to develop across the Centenary period running up to 2018, sustaining interest and driving further discovery around the conflict.

To mark the Centenary, the Every Man Remembered website was created.

Forming a strategic alliance with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, we harnessed their pre-existing database which held information on the name, age, hometown and final resting place of those who lost their lives in WW1.

The campaign creative all directed to this site, aiming to inspire the public to visit www.everymanremembered.org and either commemorate someone they have a connection to, or find someone who has no-one to commemorate them.

By entering their name and town, the Every Man Remembered database connected people with fallen service men or women from the First World War, finding someone in their family, or who shares their name, age, workplace, birthday or hometown. They could then commemorate them with a personal dedication and, if they desired, a donation.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission data was the very engine that fueled our campaign creative. Cherry-picking from the database the names of the fallen who shared their names with contemporary celebrities and iconic figures, we were able to drive relevancy and cultural currency with a contemporary audience.

Targeted press placements were contextually placed in publications, spotlighting these individual stories of the fallen and their modern day namesakes. So commemorations to Lance Corporal Alex Ferguson were amongst the Daily Telegraph’s sports pages; Private Harry Styles in Heat Magazine.

Social Media propelled this campaign, building fame, scale and reinvigorating the stories behind the fallen. In consciously selecting from the database which held the greatest cultural relevance, we could craft creative to cut through social newsfeeds’ noise. In doing so, we effectively reached younger audiences, triggered content sharing and through peer validation, converted this into commemorations.