Battersea Dogs Home to benefit from Christmas record
Howard Lake | 29 November 2004 | News
Battersea Dogs Home is to receive the proceeds of a Christmas single by Rockford, an animated dog that has been adopted by the animal charity to support its work.
“Christmas Morning (Rockford’s Christmas Song)” has been created by Sweetapple, the creative team of Elaine and Matthew Sweetapple, who created the successful Peeball campaign for the Prostate Cancer Charity which raised £150,000. The single is launched today.
Rockford, say the Sweetapples, “is not
the product of a global marketing company or TV series, he’s simply a home-spun dog whose heart-warming story is told through great music”. He and his songs have been donated to Battersea Dogs Home, with the result that the charity has spent nothing on producing the record.
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The “Christmas Morning (Rockford’s Christmas Song)” single includes
Rockford’s Christmas song and video set at
Battersea Dogs Home, plus “a Ruff Mix of ‘Roaming with Rockford'”. The single is the first release from Rockford’s
Rock Opera, a 13-song rock opera about the “lovable but slightly flatulent puppy”. A new Rockford song and story will be released from this every month during 2005.
Fiona Healey-Hutchinson, Director of Fundraising at Battersea Dogs Home,
said: “Everyone at Battersea loves Rockford and we just know he will be a huge success. He’s not only supporting the Home by raising money for us through sales of his single, but also helping us to communicate our
messages about responsible pet ownership.”
The record has been produced by Gerry Bron
of Bronze Records, who, over the last 50 years, has worked with bands such as The Shadows, Manfred Mann, Motorhead and
Queen.
Elaine Sweetapple told UK Fundraising: “we have not asked for any charity to pay us for our work”. Indeed, they invested £30,000 of their own money in the development of Peeball . Of course, they were careful to ensure that they generated income from their product idea by securing the patent.
The Sweetapples said in an interview with The Times recently that they had several other charity projects lined up, but that clients should not expect anything “safe”.
The Rockford single can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk for £3.99.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.