Well, today we got our 24hr brief through. In very brief summary it calls for groups to reimagine the image of volunteering, in particular a volunteering branch of the careers service within the university. This calls for pretty rapid development of ideas, but tonight has mostly been for research. Jenna, Melynda and myself all meet up this evening to discuss ideas for research and general themes the marketing concept should cover when developed.
We looked at how charities brand themselves nowadays. Many take a very different approach to the attitude in which they persuade people to help them, typically dependent on the demographic and the nature of charity work itself. So one example to look at is the notorious Invisible Children organisation which caused unprecedented controversy earlier this year with their Kony 2012 campaign.
Whilst their reputation as a charity is questionable at best there’s no doubting their power as a force of marketing and advertising. Their viral video at the centre of the campaign created a frenzy around the the organisation and the cause they aimed to promote. Whilst we don’t look to promote causes, but merely a support in voluntary work in general it’s a useful reference point in regard to the demographic at which Invisible Children aimed their campaign at.
Typically the they aim their message to a younger audience, perhaps mid-teens to early twenties and this feels evident in the way the organisation composes itself. For example, typically they focus on social networking to spread messages, documentary and film-making being a big part of their overall method. The existence of YouTube acts as the best possible catalyst for something like the Kony campaign, though it;s still impressive that people watched such a long video, and in such great numbers to classify the documentary as globally ‘viral’. This was perhaps achieved in the tone adopted by Invisible Children, one that is more serious, almost working as a ‘call to arms’ for modern youth.
Above are some statistics about the Kony 2012 campaign and its method of distribution. The age demographic is pretty clearly shown there too. But this is perhaps working backwards, as this is looking at the method in which we might propose to convey our plans for tomorrow. The important thing is what message should we convey? It’s fine saying Invisible Children was successful for utilising viral video, but viral is a trap many companies have been lured by as a mode of advertising. The message behind all of this has to be key.
Another reference point that was raised in this first meeting was the advertising attitude utilised by the British Army. Whilst Invisible Children play ‘hardball’ as it were with their audiences, using guilt and pity as a leading emotional factors in persuading the youth demographic, the British Army, surprisingly has a rather inverse attitude. They realise that the army, and warzones, are not considered desirable places to be, so focus on more consequential benefits of being involved in the armed forces. A recent campaign on Spotify put emphasis on meeting new people.
“The real Sgt. Brady isn’t recording this commercial, he’s too busy training and hanging out with his mates”
The fact that this marketing was placed on Spotify firstly demonstrates it was aimed at a younger demographic, the typical user age of Spotify being between 20-29 years old, roughly 650,000 males within that age bracket alone. But to contrast with the Invisible Children campaign it appeals to the positive emotions of their target audience, similarly with their other ad campaigns, such as the one shown below, where job prospects after the army are pushed. Salaries are also a big selling point, but we don’t have that luxury.
So on the whole how does all of this affect the voluntary branch of the Dundee careers service? The message should be more positive. Whilst the Invisible Children campaign worked on a negative emotion basis it created a lot of backlash to the campaign’s creators. Also it doesn’t correlate with research we carried out today on people’s views towards volunteers. Which leads me cleanly onto research.
We were given research that had already been conducted from volunteers on why they volunteered and the benefits that it earned them. However we found that the problem with this was that it only showed one side of the argument, only demonstrating why current volunteers were pleased with their decision, yet ultimately it isn’t them we aim to convince with this marketing strategy. It’s the people who aren’t yet volunteers. So we went out to ask for people’s reasons on why they didn’t volunteer, and the reasons that came back for me, personally, were relatively consistent. People often said that they didn’t have the time, and already had commitments. They said that the free time they currently had was for coursework, socialising or relaxing alone, Also the big disadvantage of volunteer work is that it is by definition unpaid. It can lead to paid work though, and in the current financial climate that might be an important thing to keep in mind, considering jobs are so hard to come by, in Dundee in particular.
This is where the army adverts come into play. They focus on employability is a good angle to aim for, but ultimately it;s perhaps a little bland. To take the same positive attitude along with the medium most frequented by our target demographic (students) will be our ultimate balancing act. We’ll have to come up with a more eye-catching concept than that. It would be nice to have some humour in there too, as that’s often the kind of thing that catches attention on social media sites. Kony 2012 obviously being the exception to prove the rule. But that should all come tomorrow. This is just to collect and organise my thoughts on research so far. Be prepared for another epic post on research later on. Until then…
-Andrew
Branding Folk 