Campaign Research

By Ruby Hooper

Deaf Fest - http://deaffest.co.ukDeaf Fest launched in 2009 in memory of a passionate and gifted individual who was part of the Deaf media community. The £5,000 Bursary allowed moderately experienced Deaf filmmakers to take a step forward in the world of media and have their work presented to a larger community. Every year Deaf Fest is becoming more popular as it unites filmmakers, actors, film buffs and media experts. The purpose of the company is to allow deaf people to feel more in touch with the world and more welcomed into the society which surrounds them. Richard Griffiths grew up with deaf parents while not being deaf himself, he was the OBE of Deaf Fest up until 2013. He had a strong insight and understanding of the Deaf culture which allowed him to contribute a lot to the growth of the company.

Deaf Fest is becoming increasingly popular around the globe with festivals popping up in Italy, Australia, India, France, Spain and many more. Unfortunately I was unable to discover a media kit for this particular company but because festivals are due to take place globally we know the festival is becoming well known due to more participants.

Deaf Fest is celebrating the arts of media to those who feel as if they don’t have access to media. The aim for a variety of people of a wide range of different ages, volunteers are welcomed with open arms for both production and the award ceremony. Deaf Fest has numerous sponsorships such as Secure Quotes and The National Lottery which supports the funding of the no profit company.

There are a few purposes of this company and I believe that they are: to strengthen a community by bringing them together, to raise awareness of the talent that is amongst deaf people in media, to change attitudes of people and also to create access to media for people who may of thought they could not be involved in the production side. Deaf Fest also aims to bring about global change, by hosting world wide festivals people are not only informed nationwide but globally were are more aware of the talent due to Deaf Fest.

Hubbub (Neat Streets)Hubbub is a London based company that are campaigning for an over looked and almost unseen issue. Their aim is to stop people littering chewing gum on the streets and the way they have gone about the campaign is artistic and interesting.

The purposes of Hubbub’s campaign is to bring about a local change because currently the campaign is only taking action in London. The purpose is also to change peoples attitudes towards littering chewing gum in particular, the campaign also states facts which provides information to the public. Hubbub is also simply campaigning towards a decrease in littered chewing gum. Hubbub have campaigned for various different things, they began with talking, discrete bins which was not as successful as they hoped for, after taking the idea back to the drawing board they created a vibrant talking bin that had to be regularly emptied which adds to the busyness of the London high street. Quickly they discovered that subtleness was not going to make a change to society, it was then when the chewing gum board idea came into play. Due to the success of the chewing gum board they are also campaigning using cigarette butts that people would litter on the floor, they are using a voting system in which people put their cigarette end in a box which causes people to stop littering while working together to vote their favourite and not litter the streets. Hubbub have been successful with this campaign and are hoping to venture further than the streets of London to make it more national rather than local. Now they have discovered something that works efficiently at low costs they want to spread the campaign further.

The company are taking a modern approach and communicate with people using food, fashion, homes and sport. They skip the lectures on carbon footprints etc in order to keep their audience interested. Hubbub says that small changes to lifestyles can help protect the environment, their methods of doing this is fun, money saving and unites people in a way you wouldn’t expect. The typography is clear and aesthetically pleasing as well as being well thought out as to what words will be used, it makes the company noticeable, such as their pancake related campaign called ‘Flippin’ Food Waste’ and ‘Vote with your butt’.

Modern approach

Modern approach – social media linked

Gives the image less negative space

Draws attention to step 2

Directional

Modern approach

A more demanding, less friendly font

Encouraging the audience to get involved

People have to come together to create the image, this shows that one person may not appear to make a difference but if everybody did it then there would be a difference

Draws the audiences attention elsewhere

Underlining for emphasis

Making figures bolder

Use of an inviting and personal font

Stating facts

Repetition of pink to tie the text and the image together

Bigger font size to draw attention to the fact

‘would’ states it is not too late to make a change

Meth ProjectThe Meth Project was established in 2005 by Thomas Siebel. The project was created in response to the rapid increase in the recreational use of crystal meth in the U.S. The organization is non-profitable and works closely with The Partnership for Drug-free Kids. The Meth Project is a prevention program aimed to reduce the use of meth and they do this by setting up community action programs and also in-school lessons. Other ways of reaching their target audience is through public service messaging, community outreach and public policy. All of these programs and methods are designed to communicate the risks of meth use. This particular campaign takes a very brutal approach. Behind each poster there is a short, thirty second clip that digs deeper into the story, this means the audience can research further if the poster wasn’t quite brutal enough to put them off taking meth. The aim of the campaign is to almost scare the viewers into not taking meth, the slogan of ‘not even once’ is fairly self explanatory, it states how easily a user can become addicted to the drug. When researching finder the audience is greeted with a dark and bold website which clearly gets the information to the audience while answering questions you have never asked anybody.

The graph to the left shows that between 2005 and 2006 there was a huge drop in meth labs shut down by the Drug Enforcement Administration, this therefore shows that the campaign was a great success in the first year and numbers of methamphetamine labs shut down have not been as high since the campaign began. West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources took matters into their own hands and cracked down on more methamphetamine labs. Although this is the case, because of the brutality of the campaign less meth labs have been creating the drug due to less buyers. The campaign was designed to bring about a local, national and global change. It also changes peoples attitudes towards the subject and drug when the campaign uses examples of younger people. To some extent the campaign raises awareness of the effects meth can have on somebody.

The Meth Project challenges the way teenagers think about drugs as it shows both the short term and long term effects, it causes the audience to think outside the box and the consequences so this campaign does challenge the dominant representations and agendas. When looking deeper into the campaign the audience can discover communities that have been built to bring people together to stop the use of meth, it also provides a lot of information on the website, the posters were designed to scare viewers with a reality they can closely relate to, this creates a similarity between the campaign and audience. By creating a similarity the campaign builds a relationship with their desired audience.

Statistics state that in 2006 over 731,000 people reported that in the previous month they took methamphetamine, with an average age of 16.8. In 2007 there were 133,000 new users of the drug but with an average age of 19.7 with a general decrease in meth users both younger and older. By 2012 there was a huge decrease in meth users with 0.4% of the population reporting they had taken it within the last year, this is still 1.2 million people taking methamphetamine. Although the numbers of young meth users are dropping yearly The Meth Project still has a long way to go if they want to eliminate meth from younger peoples lives.

Here is a range of posters created by The Meth Project, it is clear that they have all been created by the same company and they all have the same, scary message and purpose behind them. They are all trying to stop people from doing meth, people who currently do it, people who are considering it and people who do not even know what it is. Due to the ‘not even once’ slogan this shows they are mainly aiming at people who are considering trying meth.

Bite The Ballot - http://bitetheballot.co.uk

In February 2015 a record breaking 166,000 people voted on National Voter Registration Day which makes it the most successful voting registration campaign ever. They organized a citizen march for first time voters, Bite The Ballot had #RegisterToVote trending on the most popular social media websites as well as featuring a ‘Register to vote’ reminder at the top of Facebook news feed in which over 35 million people saw this with 28,000 people registered after seeing this placement. Bite The Ballot have also set up sessions in colleges across the country in hope of encouraging younger people to participate. This campaign also featured celebrity faces that are of great interest to younger people in hope this will convince them to vote, the aim of the campaign is not to encourage or persuade people to vote for a certain party, the aim is to make younger people vote, amongst this generation voting is not as popular as it is amongst older generations of people. The methods used are very modern to grab the attention of their desired audience, this is successful because in 2015 more younger voters participated.

“Our core values when engaging those furthest away from politics are to be unconventional, inclusive and bold. Three words you may not associate with today’s politics.”

Bite The Ballot is a party-neutral movement who want younger voters to feel powerful. Campaigns are funded by specially chosen commissioned work and their only running costs are to pay the staff. The company is not affiliated to a certain political party, they just want todays youth to stand up and be counted.

Even though the campaign says how successful they were on people voting, indeed they were but statistics show that their target audience did not rise on the poll graphs. The charts state that in 2010 the percentage of people aged between 18 and 24 who voted are very similar to the latest vote in 2015. As a whole the campaign was successful but unable to reach out to their desired audience. There are many purposes behind the campaign and one is to change peoples voting behavior, they also strengthen a community of first time voters, to change attitudes and also this campaign is to bring about a national changeBecause Bite The Ballot has a target audience of younger people there approach is a lot more modern, the same goes for their website. It is very slick and has undergone a lot of design ideas and generation to get the image they have. Bite The Ballot are very social media based, the younger generation whos attention they are aiming to catch are all over social media and are rapidly taking over the internet so creating a hashtag means people can come together and discuss or observe conversations, this is a way of bringing people together through modern technology. The logo design, website design, colours and fonts are all similar to closely link the different campaigns within the company to give it a recognizable look.

Anger at ‘anti-homeless’ spikes - http://betterthanspikes.tumblr.com

After many campaigns voiced their opinion on anti-homeless architectural designs newspapers finally took notice of the anger amongst people in communities. On the 23rd of July 2015 The Guardian newspaper saw the issue and publicized it to raise an awareness of the issue to those who the campaigns did not reach. The interesting factor on this particular subject is the obliviousness of people amongst society, this has been an on going issue for many years and finally in the year 2015 people were made aware of the problem. For this part of my research I am not looking at any particular campaign but an article that has been written by someone who has seen the many campaigns. Due to the popularity these campaigns have gained from the newspapers protests have occurred all across the UK, outraged Brits have stood up together in attempt to make a change not locally but nationally and almost globally. The issue has also made people of the community fight back by placing mattresses on top of the uninviting spikes to neutralise the harshness that has been created. There are more campaigns who aim to help the homeless, anti-homeless bars campaigners are becoming wildly popular which would not of occurred if the newspapers did not raise the awareness. The campaign who was greatly noticed by The Guardian was Better Than Spikes, a small company who have just set up the campaign in 2015. The Guardians online newspaper features their video of laying the mattress and books down on the spikes in hope people may come together and see the issue we are surrounded by.

The purpose of this campaign is to bring about a local and national change to recognize the issue and put a stop to spikes, bars and slanted bus stop seats not only making it even more difficult for homeless people but an inconvenience for everybody else too. The campaigns purpose is also to simply campaign, change attitudes of people, this makes them more welcoming towards homeless people but also take a disliking to council actions and certain shops for placing the spikes in their outdoor alcoves. The campaign raises awareness of of the occurring issue, it brings people together which strengthens a community as the society is brought closer together as the place we live, work and play is home to many. The campaign itself does not provide information but The Guardian newspaper has provided the facts and information to the public. This campaign has definitely infiltrated mainstream media which almost campaigns to a much larger audience. And finally another purpose of the campaign is to build a relationship with the audience, it makes them aware of the issue and no longer oblivious.

The impact this campaign and publicity had was that Foxtons (where the mattress was placed) removed the spikes outside their store because of the 21,000 signatures gained from the petition. A similar impact occurred outside of a Tesco supermarket, they too removed their homeless spikes, bigger campaigners and charities outside of London are popping up too, I believe this campaign can only lead to further success unless society become bored of the issue and wish to no longer address it.