Thursday, 23 May 2019

Lo2 - Evidence of development of campaign materials

Print Based Versions. 

Version 1. 

After meeting with our client and confirming ideas for the breif, me and my partner started to come up with ideas. We knew the visual needed to seem serious in order to let our audience know that we'll take them seriously, plus a 'serious' denotation is conventional to campaigns based on subject matters such as illness. However, the campaign also needed to be appealing to a younger audience and meaning it should include relateable and visually appealing aspects. After doing research into other NHS campaigns we decided that a 'handwritten list' would be a good idea to go for due to the fact that it looks like it's been written in a class - which is potentially one of the only places a young carer would be able to attend in-which doesn't revolve around caring for their parent, making the visuals relateable to them and therefore appealing.  However due to it's lack of 'exciting' visuals' such as bright bold colours and shapes, it still has a serious denotation in order to make the young carer feel as though they're being understood.

On the list, we decided to include tasks such as 'contacting a GP 'and 'checking pills' for their mum / person they're caring for, in order to reinforce the fact that we understand the hard work and daily tasks that most young carers would have to complete. We also wanted to get the message across to other young people / non carers who maybe don't understand the struggles young carers deal with, such as having to cancel going to the cinema with their friends in order to do a food shop or something that a parent would typically do for them. Which was shown by this task being crossed out on the list. It also shows young carers that we understand it isn't fair on them, this is important as we want them to feel as though they can contact us since this is the purpose of the campaign, therefore we need to show that we will be understanding if the decide to do so.

I think the red writing and black bold writing is a strength for this poster due to it's clear font and thickness making it easy to read, plus it's highlighting the make key factors of the poster such as the fact that we want our young carers to make their voices heard and where to contact us in order to do so. However, after gaining client feedback and developing further ideas we decided that we thought the writing on the 'checklist' area wasn't clear enough to read, especially from a reduced size and distance, which inst conventional of campaign posters. We also thought despite the black bold font being easy to read, it isn't fitting with the aesthetic of the poster due to everything else being hand written plus the placement of the black writing isn't great.

Version 2.




Here you can see the improvements and changes that have occurred in comparison to version 1 based on our previous thoughts towards what could be changed / made to look better.

Firstly, we changed the 'To Do List' text to be in capitals and have a more chunky yet still hand written looking denotation, Again, to make the writing clearer we used the pen tool on Photoshop and went over the text multiple times in order to make it's outline thicker and easier to read from a distance. The fact that the writing is now in capitals helps reinforce the theme and idea of the campaign to make it clearer on what message we're actually conveying.

I think this sans-serif font also makes the poster more relateable to our target audience due to the fact that it denotes messier and more 'doodle' like, which is the sort of writing you'd typically see on graffitied school books and planners.

Since we didn't like the denotation of the black bold text - due
to it looking out of place and unfitting in comparison to the rest of the visuals on the poster, we changed the '#makemyvoiceheard' to being a 'handwritten' hashtag, plus added our clients real logo since this is convention of real posters and therefore gives a more professional and realistic denotation to our poster, whilst, still letting our target audience know where to contact us.

Version 3. 

After sending our client our previous version (2), we we're made aware of the fact that the poster was perhaps outdated, due to the majority of our 12-15 year old target audience being digital natives they'd most likely make a checklist on the notes or reminders app of their phone, rather than write it on paper.

Therefore, our new idea was to still incorporate a checklist into the poster, however, now that we were having it displayed on an iPhone screen we needed the text and other elements to reinforce that 'technological' theme in order to give the poster a visually appealing and professional denotation since everything would looking fitting with one another.  Meaning, we included elements that you'd typically see online, such as: Sans-serif font which clearly looks digitally produced, Alton Towers, Sea Life and Lego Land logo graphics and a banner towards the bottom on the poster displaying further information on the situation and how to get in contact with Cancer Alliance.

Due to the fact that our previous version didn't really give the young carers a reason to 'share their story', possibly reducing the chances that they would, I thought it'd be a good idea to show our audience that they could win a free trip to either of the above attractions if they got in contact with Cancer Alliance. Since, these places are extremely popular tourist attractions visited mostly by younger people, therefore luring them towards getting in contact with Cancer Alliance. We thought this was especially a good idea since this is an opportunity most young carers wouldn't typically get, further increasing the chances of them reaching out.

We decided to make the #makemyvoiceheard one of the biggest elements on the page due to the hashtag helping reinforce the theme of social media and technology in order to attract our digital native target audience. The fact that it's quite a short and snappy phrase will also help get this poster stick in peoples head. Lastly, due to the hashtag being one of the most important elements on the page since it helps make it clear that we want our target audience to make their voice heard and contact us, we wanted it to be one of the biggest aspects of the poster to make it easier for people walking by or driving by to easily read as you'd only have to glance at the poster in order to denote what it says.

We also added a banner including more information on the campaign such as where to contact us and where to find more information about the project, which is an improvement from our previous version since no contact information was denoted. This sort of banner is also conventional to most real campaign posters and therefore helps give a more professional and realistic look, making our audience take us more serious.

However overall despite there being some significant and more fitting changes to our poster, there were sill may improvements such as the fact that the poster had too much white space, making it boring to look at and less targeted towards our specific audience. Secondly the photo used in the poster was not our own, therefore we wanted to take our own photos for our poster in order to avoid meeting any copyright issues.

Version 4. 
In comparison to our previous version you can clearly see a difference in visuals. This is due to the fact that we wanted our poster to be more visually appealing and targeted towards our 12-25 year old audience. Therefore, the background of our poster denotes a social setting in which a majority of our target audience would be familiar with (a busy cafe).

We highlighted key words with a teal colour and also made them sans-serif to catch our target audiences eye since this font is bold and easy to read from a distance. This is conventional of posters due to the fact that people passing by may not have time to rad full sentences therefore its important that key words are highlighted since they give the audience a quick understanding and idea on what the campaign is about. Due to the teal house style we decided to make the logos and other elements such as the 'reminder' title on the iPhone screen also teal.

Overall despite the fact that this version has many strengths, we thought that it also mad many weaknesses. Such as the fact that, the mix of both light and dark tones in the background make it hard to read the text properly, especially if you're driving by or looking at the poster from a distance. The text on the iPhone screen is also very hard to read plus we didn't know if it was acceptable to mess around with other companies logos by changing the colours. Therefore despite our journey towards making this poster and having our idea of a 'checklist', we decided to start new with other ideas due to having a meeting with our client and discussing the previously said issues of the poster. These ideas being, including a more 'personal' message and different sort of langauge, such as including phrase saying things along the lines of “I might look lit but I’ve been up early caring for my mum, who is going through chemo right now… I’m sharing my experience and want to know yours, want to share?” Feedback your views and change the way cancer care is done across the region #letstalkcancer – www.canceralliancesybnd.co.uk" . Which was given to us by our client

Version 5.

As you can see this version differs heavily from our previous versions and ideas. 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 our. Therefore hopefully being a strong message 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 to them 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 on where to find our 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.

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. 

Version 6. 
In this version we have made improvements such as the fact that we put the text inside the screen of an Iphone. We did this in order to make it more clear to our target audience that this was a text conversation. I also think this graphic helps enhance the theme of technology and social media since the Iphone instantly reminds you of social media platforms such as instagram, plus is an object which is more or less used by everyone aged between 12-25, making the poster quickly relateable from the second they look at it, helping keep their attention.

Overall we're happy with the denotation of this poster since although it has white space the key message is strong and everything fits in a visually appealing way. Due to the fact that the quote at the bottom of the poster was suggested by our client we're happy knowing that we're successfully fulfilling our clients brief and requirements as we've worked through this project closely.

Despite us being happy with the outcome of this poster we do know that there are improvements such as the text being potentially too small to read from a distance. However, there was no way for us to overcome this without making the text look unrealistic and not making much sense since it would have to be much bigger and cut down. Lastly we think it would have been good to include the word "young carer" on the poster to make it clear to our target audience that we're talking about them since they may not realise. 

Version 7. 
This is version is just the same as the previous two versions with a slightly different layout and wording choice, we didn't know what version we we're going to pick as our final one at this point and therefore we made many in order for our client to tell us which one they liked the most.

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.

Audio visual versions. 

Version 1

For our audio visual advert we had the same idea that we did when we started the poster, that being a checklist. Therefore, in this video you can denote a very similar concept and visual in comparison to our early poster drafts before we started to have other ideas since we started the adverts at a very similar time. Such as the things that are said on the list, e.g. 'check mums pills'. 

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 relatable 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. 

However, this video needs to include other elements such as social media links due to these sort of visuals being conventional to real adverts but these links will show the audience where to get in contact with us. It's also important that we include other elements to the audio visual such as some text helping the audience understand the context of the video such as the text that was displayed at the bottom of our poster. Lastly we need the AV to include the cancer alliance logo. 

Version 2.

In this version, improvements have been made to the audio visual in comparison to the previous version. We added a slide at the end of the clip giving conventional advert information and visuals. For example, the slide has 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 slide also contains a sentence reading 'Tell us your experience as a young carer' in order to tell our audience what the advert is about and what it's purpose is. Since, this isn't made very clear in the first clip.. 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.

Lastly, we added contact information and the Cancer Alliance logo, in order to give the young carers a place to contact us and also visit the website in order to find out more information on the campaign. The inclusiveness of the logo is also 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.

However, we still thought the AV had room for improvement, such as having the previously mentioned elements on separate slides - in order to break down the informational and make things easier to understand. Plus, this way of revealing information is conventional to real adverts, particularly NHS based ones, helping our advert meet our clients brief. We also wanted to add sound effects to the advert such as having keyboard typing sounds, since this will help reinforce our digital, social media theme - resulting in our digital native audience being appealed and helping grab their attention if they're not looking at their phone. Plus having sound on adverts typically makes them more appealing to watch.


Version 3.



In this version 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.

We've also separated all of the information over three different slides in order to break things down and make it easier for the audience to understand the context of the advert. The second slide also includes contact information for the young carers watching that'd like to share their story. Overall I think this audio visual includes everything that a basic conventional advert should, such as a clear brand identification, clear message / purpose and appealing visuals and SFX.


Social media versions. 

Version 1.
For The social media posts, we decided to have them demonstrating similar visuals to the poster that we made previously. 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. 

Following this we want to see what these posts would look like when actually uploaded to the cancer alliance account as it will give us and our client an insight into how the campaign will look once released and give the client the opportunity to decide whether they'd like to upload it or not.


Version 2.

Here you can see how to 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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