Award-winning stories, from print to podcast

Looking after swathes of natural wilderness, castles and country parks is a big job

but it’s what The National Trust for Scotland has been doing since 1931. 

The Trust is Scotland’s biggest membership organisation, with over 300,000 members united in their love of Scotland. The Trust’s priority is to maintain Scotland’s beautiful heritage.

We have worked with the National Trust for Scotland since 2013, starting out with their much-loved member magazine.

Since then, we’ve flexed beyond the pages of print to provide award-winning content wherever lovers of Scotland can be found.

During the pandemic, we developed and delivered a series of virtual talks for Trust members, bringing to life the wonderful places that they were no longer able to visit. Making the most of the charity’s own rangers, guides and experts, the events including filmed walk-throughs of some of the Trust’s most iconic locations and generated a massive amount of live and post-event engagement.

As the world righted itself, Think was asked to evolve the Trust’s nascent podcast into an enduring asset for the charity, to reach new audiences, and engage potential Trust supporters across the globe. In 2021, we relaunched the podcast as ‘Love Scotland’, encouraging the host – well-known BBC Scotland broadcaster Jackie Bird – to really display her passion for history. We aligned the podcast to our wider content strategy across print and digital, ensuring messaging and content themes were echoed across all platforms.

Content is now planned from an omni-channel perspective,

thinking about the messages that we want to communicate first and then choosing the correct channel, or channels, to deliver that message in the right way to the right audience. We produce video, web content, print and audio to deepen member engagement and build retention.

In September 2022, we encouraged the Trust to move the podcast to a weekly format while actively seeking out big-name guests and big-ticket historical stories. As a result, the podcast saw an increase of 627% in downloads year on year. The podcast now reaches audiences from across the globe, with a significant proportion of listeners in the US (30% of total downloads) – this just goes to show how many people really do Love Scotland.