The brief given to me and my partner by our client Cancer Alliance was: to create a campaign for young carers who are caring for family members suffering with cancer. This was to be done in order to make young carers reach out and contact Cancer Alliance by sharing their story. Cancer Alliance wanted to hear feedback from people who had seen cancer care first hand and they wanted to hear their constructive criticism for the future when working with similar patients.
To start this campaign I looked into all the different media channels regarding where I could distribute my campaign and have decided to use blended marketing, meaning our campaign will be distributed through both traditional and digital platforms. Our chosen channels are social media platforms such as Instagram, print based posters and our clients Cancer Alliance website. This is due to the fact that our target audience ranges from 12-25 which is quite large in range, making our target audience consist of both digital natives and millennials. Therefore, we wanted to have the campaign on platforms that everyone within our target audience audience would see, for example, the younger half of our audience (12-18) would most likely see the campaign digitally since they're digital natives and therefore typically on their phone a lot, which is why we wanted to upload to campaign to web and social media photo and video sharing networks such as Instagram, since this is a very popular platform that most teenagers and kids use daily, increasing the chances of our campaign reaching the audience. The older half of our audience (19-25), despite most likely also being on this app, might not use it as much as they're most likely at work and uni most of the time, therefore, to increase the chances of them seeing the campaign, we wanted to have it physically put up in popular destinations for people within the ages 19-25 such as in gym changing rooms and bus stops. We found these locations to be ideal as most young adults go to the gym and use busses as driving a car to uni and into town is expensive due to parking. Therefore, meeting on of the technical aspects of my clients brief since the main purpose of the campaign was to reach young people, which these platforms allow me to do. Our target audience would typically be of the NRS C2DE social grade since the reason young people care for their parents is typically because a carer or additional treatment cannot be afforded, therefore placing the posters in locations such as bus stops helps us reach this audience as public transport is a cheap option for travelling.
Initially the posters that we wanted to make were going to be hand draw by myself in order to connote a feel of authenticity and a genuine message as it seems more personal to the audience which is ideal when trying to get in contact with young people on a sensitive and private subject matter. However, after creating visualisation diagrams and scanning them in digitally we came to the conclusion that because we are working with a real life, large company we wanted to demonstrate our digital media skills to show how we care professional and employer-ready. Therefore, we weren't happy with the hand draw posters as they looked cheap and unrealistic in comparison to real campaign examples. Consequently, we came up with the idea to write a checklist that a young carer would write in order to remember to do tasks related to caring for their parent / guardian. We decided to do this through Adobe Photoshop using a graphics tablet and a free for use image of plain paper as the foundation to write on. We found this to be much more visually appealing and started sending our drafts to our client Cancer Alliance in order to gain feedback, they told us that it was unrealistic due to the tasks written on the list as a young carer wouldn't typically be able to go to the cinema with their friends, in general it wasn't ideally fitting the brief. We tried the approach of using an actual mobile phone using the notes and reminders apps in order to type up a checklist and applied the screenshot of the list to a free for use mock-up of a mobile phone. This approach allowed our campaign to more specifically reach our digital native target audience since a mobile phone is something that they'd use to write checklist on rather than a pen and paper due to technological convergence and convenience, a theory by Henry Jenkins 2008. Therefore making the content more relatable and appealing to our audience. We used software such as Adobe Photoshop on in order to add the cancer alliance logo, banners and text to the poster. Overall its denotation was pleasing however we found that the text on the screen was too small to see and therefore wasn't useable.
After changing this advert layout multiple times using different mock ups and approaches we decided to try a completely new idea. This idea revolved around an ill mum and their young carer having a text conversation about how they've ordered her pills and is overall demonstrating activities that are conventionally expected of a parent to be doing - rather than a child, such as: picking up their younger siblings from school and calculating the council tax. We took the screenshot of the text converation into Adobe Photoshop and added our logo, main text and slogan. After going back and fourth making adjustments through sending drafts to our client and gaining feedback we came to the design that we would use for the final poster and would later use to inspire our social media posts.
We decided on this poster to be our finalised version due to the fact that it allowed us to reach our target audience, meet our brief with a happy client and address the subject matter in a suitable way. For example, the denoted house style colours consisted of mainly black and which are gender neutral colours, allowing our advert to appeal to our target audience of both males and females. However, colours such as blue are also prominent as this colour is used to represent imessages, this became a concern because blue is stereotypically associated with being a colour that appeals to males rather than females. However, we decided to leave the text blue since both males and females typically see this denotation of a text screen everyday and therefore the poster would still be relateable and intriguing despite the use of the blue colour. Secondly, the fact that the poster was based on a text conversation allowed it to appeal to our digital native 12-25 target audience as technology is a part of their everyday lives therefore making the poster relateable. The use of gender neutral, plain colours helped represent the sensitive subject matter as these colours have no elaborate connotations or associations in comparison to colours such as yellow which connote emotions such as excitement and happiness. Therefore overall meeting our clients brief.
Our second set of adverts were to be uploaded to the Cancer Alliance website and to social media platforms such as Instagram, a photo and video sharing social network. This was to be used as our main social media channel, consequently each advert was tailored to fit both the layout and aesthetic of Instagram. We found it important for there to be a use of synergy between the traditional and digital adverts as we wanted to create a strong brand name and representation plus demonstrate our blended marketing. Therefore we created 5 more additional text conversations again demonstrating conversations that aren't conventional between not only a young carer and his parents but also his friends and other family relatives in order to show that it impacts most of their other relationships and show the constraints that they have to deal with on a daily basis. We think that these set of adverts were effective as they really show our target audience that we understand what they're going through meaning hopefully they will appreciate the campaign and try to get in contact with our client, meeting our brief. Our adverts will be uploaded to the cancer alliance website which means our target audience of young carers will be easily reached as people struggling with these issues are the primary audience demographic visiting websites such as our clients. However, we did understand that some ethical issues may come with this release as not all young carers want others to know that they experience a different childhood to other kids due to bullying and being left out, which is why we wanted to attempt to more specifically target it towards our audience though the web 2.0 / 3.0 using analytics and specifically reaching young carers only, although this obviously can't be something that's done for sure due to funds and limitations as to who we can reach. These adverts were uploaded to the Cancer Alliance Instagram account, showing that our client was happy with it and clearly meeting their brief.
Lastly we created an audio visual advertisement using the screen recording effect on the iPhone and typing out a list into the notes app, ticking different tasks of. This idea originated from our initial digital idea about having a checklist, we decided to keep it as we thought it would be smart to try and reach our audience from two different approaches and measure which gains the most recognition. We then took this footage and edited it in Adobe Premier where the logo, main text, contact information and sound effects were all composted together through different slides. I think that this audio visual looked very realistic and professional since most adverts of this genre addressing sensitive subject matters conventionally show text over different slides in order to break the information show and create a kind, friendly approach to the audience. Again gender neutral colours were main focus in order to show synergy and brand recognition along side keeping our audience of both males and females intrigued. All adverts included the use of the #MAKEYOURVOICEHEARD hashtag, demonstrating folksonomy and allowing our audience to communicate though an electronic agora, this is beneficial as it encourages young carers to talk to each other and get in contact with us which helps us meet our brief. Overall I'm extremely happy with the outcome of mine and my partner Mia Fidment's campaign for our client Cancer Alliance as they will be proudly using it as real campaign showing us that we have clearly met their brief.
Thursday, 23 May 2019
Lo3 - Explain how the created adverts meet the codes and conventions of ASA and OfCom
ASA
When creating my campaign, I needed to ensure that I stuck by the codes and conventions that ASA have put into place. In order to do this we needed to look at the 'code of conduct' guidelines on the ASA website during pre-production in order to ensure that we don't need to worry about our advert not being of ASA's codes and conventions. This was especially important for us as we were dealing with a very touchy subject (cancer and young carers) which if portrayed wrong could easily offend our audience as these are subject matter which many very extremely sensitive to.
OfCom
OfCom stands for the Office Of Communications, which is an organisation that do the same thing as ASA however rather than just adverts OfCom regulate both TV and Radio. OfCom have a 'code of practice' that anything distributed on TV and radio has to adhere to, creators need to be aware of during the pre-production stage of their advert or show. If this code of practice is not followed, the product will most likely get complained about to OfCom, causing an investigation into said product. Again similar to ASA, if the product doesn't comply with the codes and conventions of OfCom, the product will most likely be taken down and the creators may be fined.
Therefore when creating my campaign I had to ensure that I stuck to the code of practice to ensure that we didn't run into any issues with these regulatory bodies.
Legally, we especially had to look into the Data Protection Act as our campaign is designed to receive personal information from a young audience and therefore it's explicit that their information is safe with us. As, if other people had access to their information we could be putting them at danger, for example if the wrong person found the address of a young vulnerable teenager we would be putting this young carer in danger as they could go and find where they live.
Due to the fact that our target audience are aged between 12-25, we could run into legal issues such as not having the consent of parents for the carers aged between 12-17 if we were to potentially do a photoshoot. To avoid this, we'll be getting the consent from the parents of the u18 young carers and giving release and consent forms to all of the people we take photos of if we were to do so. If doing a photoshoot we'll also need location permission forms to avoid problems with the landowner.
The first photo is a real NHS poster and the one after is our Cancer Alliance poster, I think that the NHS poster clearly demonstrates the fact that we have stuck to the codes and conventions of a real advertisement in which has a similar purpose and is of a similar genre to ours. Firstly, both posters have a rhetorical question in order to make the audience think about the campaign due to it's purpose of wanting the audience to take the poster seriously and actually think about the core message.
The visuals of both posters are also very family friendly and 'bubbly', this is due to the fact that the graphics need to be suitable for anyone to see at anytime as the poster will be out in public which means anyone of any age could see it. These visuals also help create a positive and friendly atmosphere, taking away some of the negativity towards the serious issue, making the target audience feel understood.
Both posters also give instructions on how to contact the service as the purpose of our campaign isn't to get profit it's to raise awareness and source information from people who are dealing with an issue, making our poster fit into this sort of genre and therefore being conventional to a typical NHS poster and allowing us to meet our breif.
As you can also see, the house style colours on both posters mainly consist of genre neutral colours such as black and white due to the fact that posters of this genre are made to reach people of all genders due to the subject matter being serious and applying to most people.
Overall this poster shows that we have not only met the codes and conventions of ASA and OfCom due to our poster clearly being very similar to an advert that has passed these guidelines but we also know that our poster is very conventional to a real poster of this genre, helping us understand that we have met our brief and avoided any legal / ethical issues.
Lo3 - Demonstrate the development of media production for use.
Moodboard
In this moodboard that I made, I tried to incorporate as many elements possible in regards to colours, fonts, target audience and what their hobbies / interests may be. I did this in order to give my client an understanding on our ideas towards the project and an insight into how to adverts may look.
Print based version Controls
Here are some version controls of our poster advert for the campaign, despite the versions being very similar I felt that the first version with the iPhone screen made the text in the speech bubbles too difficult to read due to it being very small, which isn't ideal or conventional to real posters since you're supposed to be able to read the text from a distance in order to catch the attention of people walking or driving by from a distance. Therefore we decided to use the second version as shown above to be our final poster as the text is bigger and much easier to read.
During the production of these posters I needed to ensure that I was keeping my files and different versions organised to ensure that I didn't waste any time trying to find files that had gotten lost. Therefore, when saving each different version control I ensured to save them in order such as 'Version 1', 'Version 2' and so on. Ensuring that I wouldn't have to waste time starting anything from scratch since this could post phone the set launch date of the campaign.
Audio visual version controls
The first video demonstrates one of the earlier versions our our audio visual advert, if you listen you can recognise that the first video's SFX's are very unmatched and out of sync with the visuals since there seems to just be one repetitive keyboard tapping sound which I find to be quite irritable and unpleasant to listen to. The fact that the visuals don't match the sound is also very unprofessional looking which is something we definitely didn't want our advert to portray. In contrast, we ended up being able to perfectly time the keyboard SFX with our audio visual in the second video which is much more appealing to listen to.
Again, when saving these different version controls I ensured to keep them in organised files in order from oldest to newest as the numbers go up.
Lo2 - Roles and responsibilities
Here's a list of all of both mine and my partner Mia Fidment's roles and responsibilites towards completing our campaign.
The areas highlighted in purple represent the tasks that me and my partner completed individually, this mostly consist of written work.
The areas highlighted in blue represent that task that were completed by myself.
The areas highlighted in yellow represent the tasks that were complted by my partner Mia Fidment
Lo2 - Preparing methods of feedback
Client feedback
We we're emailing our client weekly with drafts our our different posters, audio visuals, and social media posts. This allowed us to be constantly updating and improving our advertisements to our clients standards which was a huge benefit as it meant changes didn't have to be drastic each time. The constant emailing back and fourth between us and our client also meant that they were involved the whole way though and therefor we always knew that what we were doing was positive and hearing towards the right direction which was really encouraging.
The email below demonstrates that our client is happy with the final product and isn't asking for many more changes to be made. They even asked us to do an interview to be on their website and show how we made the campaign as they we're so pleased.
Below is an email expressing much more constructive criticism in the early days of our campaign production which really helped shape and guide us towards what we were doing. This email is based on our first poster version with the checklist where our client is raising awareness on issues such as the fact that our target audience are digital natives and therefore wold they really be writing a list on paper? giving us the idea of doing a digital list and eventually leading to our text conversation idea.
She was also suggesting quotes from young carers that we could use on our posters, although we didn't use these exact quotes we went down the route of using more 'real life' language on our final poster such as 'Do you care for somebody with cancer', as this is more personal, one on one language.
Peer feedback.
We also wanted to get feedback from people who hadn't been a part of the campaign production, in order to receive first reactions and opinions on the campaign. Therefore we created a questionnaire and sent it to our target audience of people aged between 12 and 25 years old.
Overall i'm really happy with the results of the survey as our target audience can clearly see who we're targeting. This is a really important factor since if out campaign reached the wrong audience it'd be pointless and our client would get little to no attention from it. It's also clear that people understand the message that we're trying to convey which is a massive relief as if they didn't we'd have to redesign all of our adverts since the key message is the most important part of the campaign.
We we're emailing our client weekly with drafts our our different posters, audio visuals, and social media posts. This allowed us to be constantly updating and improving our advertisements to our clients standards which was a huge benefit as it meant changes didn't have to be drastic each time. The constant emailing back and fourth between us and our client also meant that they were involved the whole way though and therefor we always knew that what we were doing was positive and hearing towards the right direction which was really encouraging.
The email below demonstrates that our client is happy with the final product and isn't asking for many more changes to be made. They even asked us to do an interview to be on their website and show how we made the campaign as they we're so pleased.
Below is an email expressing much more constructive criticism in the early days of our campaign production which really helped shape and guide us towards what we were doing. This email is based on our first poster version with the checklist where our client is raising awareness on issues such as the fact that our target audience are digital natives and therefore wold they really be writing a list on paper? giving us the idea of doing a digital list and eventually leading to our text conversation idea.
She was also suggesting quotes from young carers that we could use on our posters, although we didn't use these exact quotes we went down the route of using more 'real life' language on our final poster such as 'Do you care for somebody with cancer', as this is more personal, one on one language.
Peer feedback.
We also wanted to get feedback from people who hadn't been a part of the campaign production, in order to receive first reactions and opinions on the campaign. Therefore we created a questionnaire and sent it to our target audience of people aged between 12 and 25 years old.
Overall i'm really happy with the results of the survey as our target audience can clearly see who we're targeting. This is a really important factor since if out campaign reached the wrong audience it'd be pointless and our client would get little to no attention from it. It's also clear that people understand the message that we're trying to convey which is a massive relief as if they didn't we'd have to redesign all of our adverts since the key message is the most important part of the campaign.
Lo2 - Completed campaign material
Completed campaign material #1.
Completed campaign material #2
Completed campaign material #3
We're really happy with the overall denotation of these social media posts due to the fact that they look really polished and realistic, they all also look very similar and therefore our audience will hopefully recognise each separate post as being part of the same campaign. After sending these posts to our client and gaining feedback telling us that they're really happy with the outcome we don't feel the need to adjust or change them, this is also due to the fact that this concept was used for the poster and therefore we already knew that our client would be happy with the idea and denotation of the posts.
Our idea for this poster was to show the texts between a young carer (blue) and the person he's caring for (white) in this case, his mum. We thought this was a good idea due to the fact that despite the poster only showing a small conversation it demonstrates the sort of activities in which a young carer would have to do daily. Which to a lot of people, 'ordering a taxi for someones chemo' wouldn't be something they'd ever really think about. Therefore, hopefully making people think about the campaign and making our target audience feel understood.
This poster also has benefits such as the visuals very strongly attracting our 12-25 year old target audience, due to the fact that the majority of them are digital native they'd probably be looking at their phones with the same text denotations all day, making it very relateable and catching their attention. The poster will also catch our audiences attention since people like to be nosey and listen into others conversations or read text conversations.
We again added contact information and details regarding where to find out more information on the campaign at the top and bottom of the poster. However, this text is smaller and subtle as due to the amount of writing on the poster already we didn't want to distract our audience from looking at that and understanding the key message. The wording choice here says 'do you care for somebody with cancer' therefore making the poster a little more target towards young carers since the previous version didn't really mention young carers anywhere on it and you'd most likely have to read the entire poster to understand it's context, whereas here it's a little more clear.
The text at the bottom also has more persuasive language and tries to make the young carers feel special and as though we understand them, hopefully increasing their chances of getting in contact with us, as we're clearly stating that we want to help and we want their voices to be heard.
Lastly the #makeyourvoice heard hashtag at the top of the page helps reinforce the theme of social media and therefore attracts our digital native 12-25 year old target audience. We made the hashtag one of the biggest elements on the page due to the fact that this hashtag will be used across all of our different ads on different platforms, creating synergy and recognition towards our brand due to the phrase being short, snappy and memorable.
This poster also has benefits such as the visuals very strongly attracting our 12-25 year old target audience, due to the fact that the majority of them are digital native they'd probably be looking at their phones with the same text denotations all day, making it very relateable and catching their attention. The poster will also catch our audiences attention since people like to be nosey and listen into others conversations or read text conversations.
We again added contact information and details regarding where to find out more information on the campaign at the top and bottom of the poster. However, this text is smaller and subtle as due to the amount of writing on the poster already we didn't want to distract our audience from looking at that and understanding the key message. The wording choice here says 'do you care for somebody with cancer' therefore making the poster a little more target towards young carers since the previous version didn't really mention young carers anywhere on it and you'd most likely have to read the entire poster to understand it's context, whereas here it's a little more clear.
The text at the bottom also has more persuasive language and tries to make the young carers feel special and as though we understand them, hopefully increasing their chances of getting in contact with us, as we're clearly stating that we want to help and we want their voices to be heard.
Lastly the #makeyourvoice heard hashtag at the top of the page helps reinforce the theme of social media and therefore attracts our digital native 12-25 year old target audience. We made the hashtag one of the biggest elements on the page due to the fact that this hashtag will be used across all of our different ads on different platforms, creating synergy and recognition towards our brand due to the phrase being short, snappy and memorable.
Completed campaign material #2
Me and my partner decided to make the audio visual advert and the poster advert around the same time, we wanted to have the same sort of idea shown across each advertisement, this idea was a checklist. We started off our poster by having a checklist however later changed it to being a text conversation, however we linked how the audio visual denoted so we stuck with it for the AV advert.
The video demonstrates many things, such as the that fact that this young carer is a digital native due to his use of technology and urban way of writing a checklist. Making the video instantly relateable to our 12-25 year old target audience due to the fact that they'd also presumably write a checklist this way since people of this age have been brought up with technology. Other elements such as the fact that the person writing the list has to check his 'mums' pills and study for a maths mock also make you think that they person is young since an older, more reliable person wouldn't really have to remind themselves do do some of the things on this list.
Due to this, other elements on the list such as 'google council tax' help create sympathy towards the young person writing the list and hopefully help raise awareness to people watching regarding how hard it really is for young carers since they have so many responsibilities at such as young age. This aspect of sympathy is the further emphasises by the fact that he had to delete the 'go clothes shopping' since it's connotes that they don't have time to be a normal teenage or even go out to buy clothes. We wanted to include these things in order to also make the young carers feel understood and taken seriously, hopefully increasing their chances of getting in contact with us.
The text at the end of the audio visual is cut up into three different sections, this is done to break down the informational, make it easier to understand and read. Plus, this way of revealing information is conventional to real adverts, particularly NHS based ones, as the slides are simple, serious and clear to read which is important as the text is crucial in regards to making the advert make sense. The first slide denotes our synergistic '#makevoiceheard' hashtag at the top of the slide again being one of the biggest elements on the slide, helping reinforce our brand throughout each different advertisement.
The second slide includes a sentence reading 'Tell us your experience as a young carer', this sentence helps not only persuade our audience to get in contact but it also helps gives the advert context and makes the adverts purpose clear since we're clearing stating that the advert is about young carers. I think this advert structure is good as it doesn't give away the purpose of the advert straight away, making the viewers want to carry on watching in order to understand - therefore making the ad more memorable. This slide is also accompanied by contact information so that the young carers know where to get in contact with us, and it's fitting with the 'tell us your experience' sentence as it's giving you a place to do so.
The thrid slidee the Cancer Alliance logo by it's self, the logo is not only conventional to a real advert since every advert belongs to a brand, giving the ad a more professional and realistic denotation - but, it being there also helps give our brand recognition as our audience will see the adverts often, making the campaign and brand well known, causing more young carers to hopefully reach out.
Lastly, you can clearly hear the keyboard sound effects, I think this feature makes our advert appear much more realistic and professional since everything correlates perfectly with one another. These SFX also help our advert attract our digital native as they will be used to hearing this 'texting' sound and therefore the advert will be relateable and appealing to them.
Completed campaign material #3
For The social media posts, we decided to have them demonstrating similar visuals to the poster. For example, the young carer is texting his friend saying he can't play football because his mum's ill, or texting his friend asking for them to ask their mum how to pay council tax.
Since these posts would be most likely recommended more than the poster would be seen out in public, we wanted to change up the ads in order to keep people intrigued by the campaign. We think these different text scenarios perfectly demonstrate the daily problems a young carer would face without being too complicated in regards to visuals and text, therefore being conventional to a real social media advert since they're typically minimalistic.
As you can see, in these different text conversations, the only person that has responded to him is him mum, whereas everyone else has ignored him, as demonstrated by the 'read' receipt below the text. This is done to emphasise the fact that young carers should 'make their voice heard' instead of constantly being ignored. Especially due to the fact that other kids may not want to associate with young carers since being a young carer is seen as strange to a lot of teenagers that don't have to deal with these type of situations, making them not want to listen to what they have to say.
This image shows you what all of the different posts will look when uploaded onto our clients social media account. Allowing you to see how our target audience will view the campaign. From this perspective you can't see the posts very clearly however this only how to posts will look when the audience are scrolling through the account, when they actually click on the posts or see them on their timeline, they will be much bigger and easily able to read. However, despite them still looking small from this perspective you can make out the fact that the young carer is sending texts to people and getting ignored, therefore still demonstrating the basic context of the campaign.
We're really happy with the overall denotation of these social media posts due to the fact that they look really polished and realistic, they all also look very similar and therefore our audience will hopefully recognise each separate post as being part of the same campaign. After sending these posts to our client and gaining feedback telling us that they're really happy with the outcome we don't feel the need to adjust or change them, this is also due to the fact that this concept was used for the poster and therefore we already knew that our client would be happy with the idea and denotation of the posts.
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