— Case Study
The English Speaking Union was changing young lives. But nobody knew who they were.
When an organisation spends decades shaping how young people think, speak and argue, you'd expect that story to travel.
For the English-Speaking Union, it wasn't travelling as far as they'd hoped.
As a team who spend our working days trying to say things clearly and persuasively, oracy is a subject close to home - so when ESU came to us, we wanted to help them make more noise about the difference they were making.
What we found was an organisation with a genuinely powerful mission that audiences simply weren't hearing about. Here's how we fixed it.
The Challenge
The English-Speaking Union came to us with two goals: boost brand awareness by growing impressions across LinkedIn and Meta (Instagram and Facebook), and increase registrations across their initiatives - from ESU membership to their regular and flagship events.
The Diagnosis
The awareness problem ran deeper than a lack of visibility. ESU's core challenge was that it promotes something invisible and underestimated. Oracy - the ability to speak confidently and articulately - is often seen as something people simply have, not something that's taught. That meant audiences didn't feel an urgent problem to solve, and the value of ESU's work was easy to overlook. The bottleneck wasn't the mission. It was the story being told about it.
What We Did
We built a multi-channel strategy centred on three content pillars - Education, Engagement, and Thought Leadership - giving every part of ESU's work a clear home and consistent promotion on the feed, while still leaving space for regular and flagship event content.
We shifted the storytelling itself, moving away from abstract talk of oracy's benefits and towards clear before-and-after narratives - using real student voices and testimonials to show how speaking skills change opportunities, not just performance.
Alongside this, we produced content that educated audiences on the breadth of ESU's work: event promotion, engaging social quizzes, and behind-the-scenes content spotlighting the trustees and people driving the organisation forward.
The results are in
In the months following working with Giraffe Social ESU's social presence went from quiet to unmissable, turning a story nobody knew into one audiences engaged with directly.
The content that moved the numbers
Oracy is a hard thing to make visible. We made it feel real - before-and-after student stories and behind-the-scenes moments that gave ESU's audience a reason to care, without ever feeling like a pitch.
In their own words...
Working with Giraffe has been a game-changer for the English-Speaking Union. Their commitment to our brand has been evident in every post, campaign, and interaction.
The team has an in-depth understanding of social media trends and a remarkable ability to craft tailored strategies that resonate with our target audience. They don't just manage our accounts; they bring a creative flair and a strategic mindset that have significantly boosted our online presence and engagement rates.
Judith Bijeri
Assistant Marketing Director, English-Speaking Union
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