When did your landline last ring? Do you even still have one? According to data shared in 2024, 10 years ago 84% of British households had a landline. Now it’s less than half. Precise data is sketchy, but suggests that landline users are predominantly older and more vulnerable. For these people, more often than not, their landline is a lifeline. It provides connection to loved ones, a means of accessing healthcare, or summoning help in an emergency.
By the end of January 2027, traditional landlines – those using copper wires rather than digital technology – will be switched off. The implications of this “switch off” for older and more vulnerable people isn’t just an inconvenience or a disconnection, it’s a safety issue.
When Cambridgeshire County Council’s digital infrastructure team, Connecting Cambridgeshire, commissioned us to design and launch a local awareness campaign about the upcoming Digital Switchover, they knew our expertise in audience-first strategy and community engagement would be key.
Addressing the elephant in the room
Early on, we knew we were facing a couple of big challenges.
How do you talk about the Digital Switchover with an audience who are likely to experience worry, fear and confusion upon just hearing the word “digital”?
How do you reach vulnerable and older residents, more likely to be living alone, with limited mobility or low digital confidence, and make them aware of a country-wide infrastructural change, that (at the time) the government had shared no plans to promote nationally?
Using our tried and tested formula of a deep-dive workshop with the Connecting Cambridgeshire team, followed by an internal brainstorming and a tonne of creative thinking, we shaped, sculpted and refined our approach and delivered…
Get ready. Get digital. Stay connected.
Our campaign is laser-focused on the people most at risk of being left behind. Not just from their telecoms services, but from their communities and the people they rely on. We had to ensure that they didn’t just receive the messages, but they understood what to do, and felt supported and confident enough to take action.
Information postcards, doubling up as bookmarks, are available in every library in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire and offer practical advice.
If you want their attention, first you must have their trust
Finding the right location to deliver our messages was key. Recognising that trust is the beating heart of community engagement, our strategy was to lean on trusted community spaces, with libraries selected to act as a central hub. This enabled us to cast our campaign messages far and wide.
Posters placed in key community locations frequented by our target audience help to further spread the message
We have stocked the 59 libraries across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough with over 8,000 pieces of printed support materials, to help our key audience prepare for the Digital Switchover.
Securing advertising space on the back of four mobile libraries is taking our main campaign message “Is your landline ready?” to over 500 stops at villages and communities across the district.
From left to right: Will Plant, Digital Inclusion Lead at Connecting Cambridgeshire; Darren Harte, Mobile Library Driver; Katherine Hesketh, Head of Communications at Keystone; and Chantal Palmer, Head of Creative at Keystone.
Build confidence, not just awareness
Raising awareness is only the first step of the campaign. To get to the overall goal of inspiring action – “Contact your phone provider and find out if and how the change affects you” we knew we needed a stepping stone – reassurance. We knew our main audience could feel daunted by rapid technological change and we also knew that misinformation was rife. Our messaging avoids jargon, focuses on empowerment and offers simple but practical support. Gentle encouragement to ask for help from a friend, family or neighbour highlights where support can be gained from trusted sources.
Local organisations have also been equipped with the resources to share the campaign materials within their own networks, again, offering delivery of our campaign messages from a trusted source.
Thanks to a strong visual identity led by our in-house Head of Creative, as well as simple messaging and a community-first approach curated by Keystone’s Head of Communications, we’re helping more people across Cambridgeshire feel ready, confident, and connected for the imminent digital switchover.
How do you know when you’ve got it right?
Recognising that traditional print media is still valued by our core audience, we reached out to over 100 community publications and asked them to include a story about “Get ready. Get digital. Stay connected”. We knew we’d hit the mark with the whole campaign when we received this reply from one editor:
“I think it’s a really important subject, which is of importance and concern to many of our readers”.
Our #1 advice if you’re planning a community engagement campaign?
Craft empathetic messages that will connect with your audience emotionally and deliver them in trusted places.
Do you know someone at risk of being left behind?
Based in Cambridgeshire and want to help your community feel confident and connected too? Ask for our Get ready. Get digital. Stay connected Stakeholder toolkit.
