06:00, 28 December 2025
Words by Cheyanne Bryan, Editorial and Campaign Marketing Executive, London
Brand and charity partnerships may be one of the most exciting things we look out for throughout the year at Smiley News.
So as we reminisce on what a year 2025 has been, we’d love to highlight some of our favourite brands that captured a charitable spirit this year.
Starting off strong (and totally unbiased), we have the BGC Charity Day. An annual event on 9/11 marking the day where tragedy struck their office in 2001. Every year, BGC hosts a charity day where 100% of global revenues go to charities around the world.
This year, many famous faces such as Anthony Joshua, Holly Willoughby and Will Poulter hit the trading floor to raise funds for the respective charities. We had the pleasure of attending the 10th annual event in 2025, which you can learn more about here.
Two words: Buff. Binmen. A simple idea which took inspiration from swimwear calendars popular in the 1960s, and put a modern twist on it. BusinessWaste.co.uk, the commercial waste management company, is the mastermind behind this exciting charity calendar. This campaign offers a double-dose of goodness as it is an amazing way to raise money for FareShare, a charity focused on fighting, while also celebrating an overlooked profession.
The limited edition calendar is still available here!
When brands come out with some special packaging it just is better. Well for this year’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign, Asda created its first ever charity TikTok Shop bundle with a range of Tickled Pink products.
The bundle cost £7.17, a key reference to the statistic that 1 in 7 women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. All profits from sales would be split 70/30 to support leading UK Breast Cancer charities Breast Cancer Now and CoppaFeel!.
Global tech company Lenovo has teamed up with Big Issue Invest (the social investment of the Big Issue) supporting charities and social enterprises by supplying refurbished ThinkPad laptops.
To date, an initial 50 devices have been successfully distributed to a charity tackling digital poverty in Greater Manchester, a prison rehabilitation programme, and a London-based filmmaker running an outreach programme for young people to learn about film.
This has to be one of the most unique brand-charity activations we saw this year and it did not disappoint. Popular drink brand Supermalt collaborated with the the Windrush Generation Legacy Association (WGLA) to do a competition to platforming emerging artists’ work on their cans for a limited edition run.
The competition had three categories and the winners are:
Each winner received a prize to support their careers which included a mentorship programme, one-year tech support, an iPad Air, Apple Pencil Pro and MacBook Pro.
