Session 6 - Refining Our Campaigns And Discussing The Different Elements Of Our Campaign - 20/4/12

There was a slight change to this session. As there are two different campaign groups in our class, we split into two different rooms with two different bloggers.

I am ? campaign

Update: After the play we went to see in the last session we managed to film some people including the actors about what a role model is.

The play told the story of a group of guys and one girl and focused on gang violence conflict. We watched it at The National Theatre. One of the girls who spoke to us, said that she was in it because she wanted to raise awareness and share her personal experiences.

Our campaign is an exciting, interesting and powerful idea that will definately make a big difference, it just feels like we have way to much going on with it. As we didn't have anything nailed down and a tight plan in place, we worked on making our campaign simpler.

We broke our campaign down into three phases:
1. Recruit high profile role models
2. Recruit in role medels within the community
3. Support

Marvella, a peer mentor from Hackney Charity, Offcentre came in to help us with our campaign. We gave her an overview of what our campaign is.

It will show people that there is a way out of a gang and that there are other option. It will be targeted at 13+ year olds to stop them being influenced to join a gang in the first place.

Group activity:
We all split up into three groups to discuss the different stages of our campaign. After discussing the different phases we decided to change the order around and make a few changes to them.

1. Recruit role models - high profile and interview
2. Run a workshop to recruit role models aged 16-17 (olders) in the community. Support them in preparing to come to schools and speak to the 11-14 year olds (youngers).
3. Go to schools with the role models and speak to the 11-14 year olds (youngers)

Questioning Marvella:
Ardi filmed everyone as we all asked Marvella some questions about being a peer mentor and role model. Some of the questions included:

What support do you get as a peer mentor?
- Cash to help us go to the cinema, buy a soft drink with them, etc
- Supervision with a counsellor to tackle any issues
- Support group with other mentors to swap ideas

What more support would you like?
- Ideas for what to do with young people

Videos for our campaign:
We split into two group to focus on the two different videos that we will be using for our campaign:
1. Young Shockz - a short film about a young boy who has options to join a gang or to stay on the right track. The message for this will be: 'Be your own boss'.
2.  A video advert to recruit role models with the message: 'Make a difference'.

After we finished working on plans for our videos we pitched our ideas to Mr Colby.


- The role models will come in and show their video the the youngers
- The video will be shown on YouTube too
- Marvella has agreed to help support and sign-post the role models - thanks Marvella!

Discussing our video budgets:
We discussed our budget and what we will need for the expenditure rationale for our videos.

Lil Shockz:
We discussed what/who we will need and what resourses we already have:

- An actor to play an older
- An actress to play the mum
- We will do our own sound work
- Natalie will be assistant camera person
- We need some photos of the locations that we will film in
- We will put an advert on Shooting People to bring in the actors/actresses
- Props including posters and materials
- We already have a script and storyboard
- Camera person

For next session we have to take some photographs of the locations that we want to use in our Lil Shockz video. 

OD on Knowledge Campaign

Objectives:

- Confirm brand colour coding and make sure the image is cohesive throughout marketing strategy.

- With final image, order supporting merchandise from the internet.

- Draw a successful storyboard that reveals all emotions desired in a minimum amount of frames.

- Seek out appropriate filming locations.

- Draft web design.

- Create content for website.

Outcomes:

The participants agreed that ODonKnowledge is the confirmed campaign name. Smoked Media is the name of the production company. The participants worked together to make sure the final touches of design would look coherent and appropriate when used. 

The participants called 3 merchandise companies to receive the cheapest available quote for what they wanted. This included: Tickets, wristbands and hoodies. All merchandise was bought. They mutually agreed on the design of the samples.

A bedroom is needed for the footage. The participants were taught of the importance of location scouting and what is needed in the process;  measurements, details on natural light and a floor plan.

The participants went through the storyboard and worked out the logistics, frames and different types of shots needed for each subject. 

Discussions:

The group pitched their developed idea to clarify their decisions.

The pitch made the group realize they need to rediscuss their ultimate objectives.

There was a danger that they currently sounded like pro-drug campaign, that the message was too relaXed and may even encourage drug users to eXperiment more. 

How and what part of the message needed to be changed in order to add a touch of urgency to the campaign? 

Session 5 - PR Campaign, Role Models and Writing A Call Sheet.

Objecitves:
- Define what a role model is.
- Write a clear set of questions to ask a potential role model.
- Outline why a famous role model would want to be part of a project like this.
- Design social media strategies.

During the session:

The participants agreed that a role model is someone that had been through social hardship and come out the other side ambitious, confident, inspirational, self disciplined, independent, enthusiastic and determined. Although A role model doesn't always mean with good intentions!

The participants found inspirational videos on the internet of role models, particularly those who had been associated with gang crime.

This led us to the question, How could we get them to back our project? What would be in it for them?

- The celebrities would want to back something that might help others who have found themselves in situations like his.
- It is a great PR opportunity as the participants have access to a huge pool of young people who are highly impressionable to other young people and most active on all social media.

Interview Questions:

We tried out a few questions on each other so as to get the answers we wanted from people. "Are you a role model?" seemed too intrusive, "Do you know a role model" would be better and they would still be able to say themselves if they wanted!

In order to access the people you want in your campaign. It is important to condense your manifesto so you can share it on twitter and it will get noticed!

Meanwhile in the Anti Drugs group, They were discussing the logistics of organising a film crew...

Pre-production and The Call Sheet

The call sheet is a vital part of organising a film set, it should have every piece of information about the set as possible so that if anything happens, people know where to be. This is essential as if people are late than the production team lose money. Money = Time.

The participants organised their roles amongst the group. What interested them? What are they good at?

Director, assistant director, producer, runner, art director, make up etc.

The Video

A young boy at a house party, two rooms looking around for where to go, one filled with healthy young people having a good time and being energetic. The other filled with dark, gloomy people who have obviously been under the influence of really bad drugs. The young boy comes out of the house and has to make a decision. "Where do you want to end up?"

Session 4 - Completing Proposals, Vox Pops And Pitching To Peabody - 9/3/12

We started off this week's session by working on both of our different group's proposals. We had to define what our campaigns are going to be about and finalise our ideas.


OD on Knowledge


Our campaign idea refined:
We will Provide information and support on drug use, through our campaign Facebook account. We will support the content with a  short film on YouTube, shared through Facebook

The campaign will help young people to make informed decisions when they are offered drugs & or if they are going to take them.

The short film that we are going to create will show how young people typically act and look like when they are on drugs. We will do this by purchasing archive footage and film characters who are within our target audience, watching this archive footage back & reacting to it.

It will have a comedy aspect to it as this will have a deeper impact. We hope that this will help young people to think before the take drugs and understand the consequences.

We will be promoting this campaign by giving out wrist bands with our campaign slogan and flyers at music gigs, festivals and a club night.

Branding:
We discussed different brands and what they mean to us. We discussed what we wanted our logo to look like. We have an unfinished logo at they moment but are working on it to make it even better. The idea is for us to have a thumb flicking a lighter, possibly a blue flame and to have 'Smoked Media' and 'OD on Knowledge' in boxes above it.

We discussed the importance of branding as a whole and why ours needs to be spot on. Ours needs to stand out and be interesting so that people pay attention to our campaign.

We looked at a short film in a similar style to what we want to do, for some inspiration and to give us an idea of how effective it will be:



I am ?


Our campaign idea refined:
Our campaign is all about finding, supporting and promoting role models through a YouTube campaign, training and school visits supported by a short film.

YouTube and Twitter are the websites that U24’s spend the majority of their time on so this seemed like the right platform.

The purpose of our campaign is to stop “youngers” joining gangs by showing them an alternative
example of successful teenagers / olders. We also want to support and celebrate role models.

After completing our campaign proposals, we went out and spoke to other young people through vox pops. Vox pops are mini interviews on film that only have 2/3 questions answered. We wanted to find out what other young people think a role model is and if they consider themselves to be one.


Branding:
Although we already have a completed logo we wanted to improve it to make it even better. We drew a few different ideas on card to see if we liked any of them better. We looked at other brands and why they are so effective. Nike is a brilliant example and we all know the brand just by a simple tick design. We discussed colours in branding too and what different colours can represent.


Both Campaigns:
We all worked on creating and planning short pitches to present to Peabody.

I am ?:
We made lots of notes and presentation cards to show everyone so that they can understand what we are explaining and to make things more visual. We created scripts so that we could remember what we had to say and so that we sounded a lot more professional.

OD on Knowledge:
We prepared by writing a script with numbers on it and going through our presentation so that everyone could remember what they had to say. We felt a lot more prepared and knew that the script would make our pitch much more professional.

Pitching:
We all pitched our campaigns and got feedback individually after we had finished. Overall the pitches went really well, and a lot more thought out and planned since the last ones.

For next session everybody has to make sure that they have all participants of their campaigns added to their social networking sites and follow 5 relevant people/organisations.

Session 3 - Planning Our Campaigns And Budgeting - 24/2/12

We are working in smaller groups to create two campaigns. We spent today's session defining our campaigns, their elements, discussing our target audiences, budgets, roles/responsibilities and setting up our social networking presence for our campaigns.

Campaign group 1:

Group name: I am ?

Our campaign idea is:

To build a network of role models to take into schools, interview and promote. We will create a video to support our campaign in the form of a short film showing the 'choice' facing young shockz.

What we will do for our campaign:

- Get celebs to RT (retweet) our message looking for positive role models using the hash tag, #rolemodels on Twitter.

- We will approach Kane, Dappy, Femi, Adam Deacon to be our celeb role models

- Ask #rolemodels to send in video messages for our styled YouTube channel (we need a brief for this)

- Interview a high profile #rolemodel

- Make a 'best of' advert like, Don't mess with Texas

- Book school trips

Young Shockz video:

We will show the choice and consequences, also show how olders (older people) really feel about youngers (younger people), i.e, that they use them sometimes. It will be a three minute film.

Budgeting:

- Meeting with role models - £130 travel, £130 food, £100 venue

- Branded sweaters - £200 - £97 for sweaters and £100 for printing

- Logo - £200

- Restyled YouTube channel - £200

- Photo shoot at college

- Film - sound person and professional videographer - £400 per day

Roles and responsibilities:

- Film - Ardi, Ayub and Abdul

- Story, location and casting - Natalie

- Story - All

- Twitter - Micha, Nicola, Peggy and Abena

Logins and Passwords:

Twitter: @iam_laswap - stayingsafe

Email: iamlaswap@gmail.com - stayingsafe

Campaign group 2:

Group name: Smoke Media - OD on Knowledge

Our campaign idea is:

We will create a short film that follows someone on a night out on drugs. We will then get the person in a controlled environment and film their reactions to the footage from their night out. If this doesn't work then we will use Stock footage and hire an actor to pretend they were the person on the night out and they will act out a shocked reaction to the footage. 

We will then get some wrist bands printed with our url on and take them to a festival or gig. We will hire some promotional girls to hand them out. There is an incentive for people to go to the web address, watch the video and then fill in the form after to win £200 worth of free gig tickets.

We want to gain a web presence on:

- YouTube

- Like and share the video on Facebook

We watched a video about a young guy who was followed by a camera crew on a night out and then shown the footage back and his reactions were filmed.

We used this video for inspiration, My Drunken Shame.

Discussing advertising, budget and promotion:
What we will need:
- Wristbands - £500 for 500
- We will look into the costs of getting a features ad on YouTube
- Events staff - £300
- We will create all of our own branding and logo
- We will need t-shirts with the logo on for the promoters - £50
- Ticket incentive - £200
- A release form for both the venue and for the person that we will be following
- Research into venues for a Friday or a Saturday night
- Camera person x 2 - £500
- Web coding - £300

- Domain name - £15

Job roles and responsibilities:
- Venue research - All
- Wrist band quotes - Zach and Kane
- Website tech research - this includes looking to web coding costs, features ad costs and buying and registering the domain names - Martin and Rhys

We finished the session by planning what research we needed to do for the next session and created our social media accounts.

Session 2 - Preparing Our Ideas To Pitch Them - 03/02/12

We spent this session preparing our ideas to pitch them to media professionals.


Planning To Deliver Pitches
We worked through a work sheet to help to guide us on the structure of our pitches. There will be four different groups pitching and they will be developed into two different campaigns. One will be about drugs and the other will be about gangs.


What Do We Need To Include In Our Pitches?
1. Who are we?
- Brand values
- What brand values do we want to portray?
Branding plays a big part in any campaign especially if we want to be more respected and recognised.

2. Message
It's important to have a main message and be able to get it across as clearly as possible

3. Creating audience persona's
For this we used some paper to mind map ideas on what our audience will be like, what they are into, etc. This is useful so that we know how to make our campaign appeal more to our audience.

4. Research
- Questions that you want an answer for
It is important to do research so that we can find out who our competitors are and what has already been done.

5. What other media do our audience consume?
This will be useful so we know how to effectively communicate and share our campaigns with them.

6. Targeting or reach? entertainment or issue driven?
We need to clearly know who we are targeting, how many people we want to reach and whether or not our campaign is entertainment or issue driven.

7. 4 main competitors. What do they do well and what do they do badly?
We can learn through this both the areas that we don't want to make the same mistakes in and what works more effectively. This will help our campaign be a lot more successful.

8. What's your USP (Unique Selling Point)?
This will be the one thing that makes you stand out above the rest of the campaigns out there and make you unique.

After working on our pitches we were ready to present them to the panel. The panel were media professionals, so knew what they were talking about. We pitched to them and they gave us their feedback.

Here's how our pitches went:



Here's the feedback that we got on our pitches:



After we all received our feedback, we decided to take aspects of each of the ideas and merge them into each of the two different campaigns.

Session 1 - Introduction To Campaigning And Looking At Campaign Ideas - 27/01/12

Introductions
We kicked our first session off with introductions to everybody.

Campaign Ideas
We all discussed some ideas on what we wanted our campaign to be about:
- Drugs (cannabis is the key thing)
- Gangs
- Knives

What Has Already Been Done?
We talked about the other groups and what 'Staying Safe' campaigns that are already being done:
- An anti-knife crime play
- A mobile website to help young people get around in London
- An anti-knife crime poster
- A anti-bullying short film
- A website that teaches boys how to talk to girls

Throwing Ideas Around
We came up with an idea which we discussed in more detail to see if it would work.
The idea was about Staying safe at a party and what the main influences are:
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Gangs
- Knife crime

The idea of a party can cover all sorts of areas.

Looking At Examples Of Innovative Campaigns
We looked at some really great campaigns that have drawn people in in a really clever way. Everyone's favourite videos were the campaigns for 'Samsung' and  'VW'.


- It's good that it's interactive but people are lazy and they won't look at it so much.


- We liked that the Voltswagen Twitter zoom campaign offered an interactive experience in the form of a ticket hunt.
- They asked people to get on their phones and follow their coordinates to go and find tickets for a gig that they were holding.
- They give people an incentive to spread the word


- To let people know that the phone's indestructible
- Smart
- It has to go viral first - it's difficult but do-able

The key of a campaign is to find out how people tick!

Looking At The Point Of Our Ideas
We discussed some more ideas in a little more detail that everybody may want to do for the campaign.
Drugs:
- The consequences and effects
- To be safe high

Knife crime:
- To the perpetrator
- 'Don't carry knives'

Gangs:
- Joint enterprise
- Prevention of joining
- Younger people - 11-19 year olds - both genders - vulnerable

We discussed the idea of squatting on other people's Facebook pages:
- Donate us your Facebook page a a certain amount of time
- Pushing for change

Some Things For Us To Consider
- Advertise it
- Arrange a small event to draw people in
- An incentive to tell everyone
- Parties mean that there is more of an opportunity to take drugs and get involved with that (this is a main issue)

Group Activity:





Finish
Everybody was asked to put together a pitch of their ideas for the next session so that we can make some decisions on what our campaign will be about.