Effective advertising?

by In Wales Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 04:59:29 AM EST

I'm helping out with a trade union women's development weekend and we want to get reps thinking about more effective ways of getting their messages across to workers and union members.

I'm compiling a slideshow showing a range of ways of getting messages across, tapping into effective advertising campaigns, viral videos, songs, images, the Cameron airbrushed poster templates and so on.

We need our union reps to come up with more innovative ways of communicating to people. In particular, the session aims to look at how we can communicate the impact of the 'austerity' cuts on women. As I've said here before, these messages have become background noise. We need to make people sit up and listen/watch/absorb the message.

My question to you is, what makes for the most effective advertising? What examples of videos, images and so on could I point people at by way of inspiring them to come up with new ideas?

Effective advertising? | 64 comments (64 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 05:01:05 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 1)

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 05:02:41 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

Another one that went viral

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 06:00:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

Not advertising but still my favourite viral video...

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 06:05:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 2)

Viral is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

A lot of viral videos have a simple formula - ordinary people doing clever/silly dance routines. For some reason, this has global appeal. (Who knows why?)

But while it gets you noticed, it may not be such a good way to get a message across.

Having said that - for what you have in mind, it could be one option to look at.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 05:54:12 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 2)

As an example why it might not be good

b3ta.com links

Paddy Power have a new and very clever ad

Mod edit: Swapped out for kittens due to reasons detailed below

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 06:02:39 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

I have a cat sat on my head right now.

The idea is to inspire some discussion about what does and doesn't work, and to get some ideas flowing that aren't just "let's do a poster".

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 06:11:34 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 1)

Posting an ad on b3ta?

Classic fail.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 06:17:18 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

Looks like a typical agency meeting to me.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 06:23:19 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 3)

Had 20 minutes on the phone with a buy my malware cleaner/steal your credit card details bod, who was quite convinced he had someone worried about the supposed threat that he was waffling on about. by sheer chance I had picked the phone up, managed to get him to give me his phone number on the grounds that I'd left my walet elsewhere so I'd ring him back. so pulled the pay as you go phone out, so if its a route to somewhere expensive number, checked I was still talking to scammer, then spun the conversation so he suddenly found himself looking down the barrel of someone who knew what they were talking about. he finally started panicing and put the phone down on me when I told him I was keeping him on the phoneline while the computer crimes unit checked that he was where he said he was and to expect a knock on the door very soon. :)

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 06:50:23 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

one detail missed, it was this afternoon :)

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 07:04:54 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

I was thinking of breaking the ice with that one. Whenever campaigns I've been around have deliberately attempted to do something viral it has fallen flat.

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Wed Mar 16th, 2011 at 06:04:55 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

Whenever campaigns I've been around have deliberately attempted to do something viral it has fallen flat.

That's because astroturf is usually boring. And classic advertising doubly so.

Social media are different from broadcast media. You have to allow a greater amount of individual customisation of the message, and thus inevitably some deviation from the party line. Advertisers schooled on broadcast media are used to working with a captive audience, where simple repetition suffices to turn even the dullest of slogans memorable.

Being a cynic, I think it's perfectly possible to make successful propaganda aimed at self-selecting, non-captive audiences. But the phenomenon is so new that the propaganda professionals mostly haven't discovered how to do it effectively yet.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Mar 22nd, 2011 at 07:42:20 AM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 1)

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 05:04:28 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 3)

A poster from the CCFD (Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development :

"You will eat when you are competitive"

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet

by Melanchthon on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 05:47:18 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 5)

I am by no means an advertising expert, though I have some experience in political communication. Corporate communication is often easier as there often is no one that will answer. In political communication the discussion is an important part of the effectiveness of the message.

In my experience it is best to start by questioning yourself:

What do you want to say? One sentence, please.
Who do you want to tell it to?

Then look at the surroundings:

Suppose you get viciously attacked. What space do you have to answer? Will you be vilified without getting your point across? Then you might want to play it safe, and dot the i's. Or will you be able to send a representative every time that can hammer in your one sentence? Then you might want to leave lots of room for attacks, as long as your answer every time is your one sentence.

Now you have an inkling of what you want to say, who you want to say it to, and how you want to say it.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 07:41:17 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 3)

I realize I forgot to take my own advice.

What I wanted to say is that form depends on function.

Take humor. Humor is often an uncertain weapon - you are making light of the plight! - which is great if you have the resources and media space to follow up, in effect then you get spin. If you do not have the resources you will only be read through your opponent's narrative - the union fat cats are joking about the poor.

Much care should also be taken so that humor is not seen in the primary material as laughing at the audience. This can inadvertently become the case if the group making the material does not overlap with the target audience.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 08:13:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 10:48:20 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 1)

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 11:12:30 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 11:14:41 AM EST

Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 5)

Advertising about bad things is a tricky area. It is easy to associate the sender with the bad thing (Amnesty - rape) or at least just want to shut it out. I saw a really good one from the Red Cross though where they had managed to turn it into something positive.

(Big text) We want to see less of this
(Little image)

If you studied the image it was about something horrible like an hospital lacking medicines. The image text though informed you that although lots of hospitals in the world lacks medicines this picture was taken just before the Red Cross delivery reached this particular hospital.

Then as a follow-up they ran

(Big text) We want to see more of this
(Big picture) Help arriving at some godforsaken catastrophe

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 11:36:57 AM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 4)

The first question is what you want to achieve. Even the professionals forget this sometimes and they measure effectively meaningless things like "brand recognition."

For commercial advertising, the key metric is easy - higher profits. (Not just higher sales, although that helps.) Any campaign that doesn't pay for itself should be considered a failure.

For something like this - what's the goal? Is it to raise money? Change policy? How can you tell that the goal has been achieved?

It's not all that difficult to create striking and memorable images and words. It's much harder to do it in a way that has a practical effect not just on attitudes, but behaviour.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 11:43:58 AM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 1)

A quick google of images on equal pay just gives same old, same old. Everything about the impact on women of the cuts is blah blah.

We'll carry on stagnating as a movement if we don't find fresh new ways of communicating.

There is plenty of scope using social media such as twitter and facebook but for organising more than getting a message across.

I think the Yes for Wales campaign is a great example of a campaign that mobilised and motivated people on quite a large scale but it was unique and time limited and a positive campaign.

Amnesty campaigns can be innovotive and positive

Domestic violence campaigns have become stronger. But there is always a fine line - people know DV exists but don't want to be confronted by it. What we need to do most is show women who do expereince domestic violence that the behaviour they keep excusing, shouldn't be tolerated and that there is help.

Comments above about taking care when confronting difficult topics is important. I won't donate to NSPCC because I really dislike their advertising campaigns. Many other charities continue to victimise/stereotype the very people they claim to support etc.

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 12:13:40 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 4)

This might be a good moment to mention that as a man I'd be a lot happier if DV campaigns acknowledged the existence - never mind the prevalence - of physical, emotional, legal, and financial violence against men.

I'm not going to support or contribute to any campaign which assumes that women are always victims and men are always aggressors. It may be like that in some countries, but that's simply not the reality of DV in the West.

What we need to do most is show women who do expereince domestic violence that the behaviour they keep excusing, shouldn't be tolerated and that there is help.

Even if you plan to keep this women-only, I'd suggest that there's quite a bit more to DV than excusing inexcusable behaviour. The psychology of DV is complex and subtle, and there's a spectrum of relationship types and behaviours which include elements of family-of-origin damage, substance abuse, and very subtle forms of control and brainwashing.

I think anti-DV campaigns would be better served by better education in relationship literacy, and better role modelling of what good relationships look like.

A campaign showing healthy relationships that don't assume mutual abuse would certainly be a first.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 02:09:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 2)

The audience is women union reps - the focus is communicating the gender impact of the cuts. We aren't looking at brainstorming on a campaign, we are just trying to get reps to produce something and gather ideas for doing more practical stuff back in their workplaces.

This isn't about DV per se, although an increased incidence in DV is associated with households who take in less than £20k, and is also associated with increased stress and financial worry.

Welsh DV campaigns more recently have highlighted the subtleties and behaviours that are not healthy in relationships.

We want to get messages out about the impact of cuts from the perspectives of unpaid care, employment, benefits and education.

The idea behind gathering examples of a range of successful campaigns/communication methods is to inspire reps to think out of the box about projects of their own and how they will communicate to their members. Clips of people telling their personal stories always has an impact.

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 02:49:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

It might be useful - partly for its shock value - to show a domestic violence video sequence where a women physically abuses a man - and then ask the question: would you like this to happen to you?

This breaks the stereotype that its always man on women abuse; that D|V is somehow an exclusively "womens" issue; and encourages men to identify with the abused rather than the abuser.

It would be interesting to see how male viewers "cope" with the video: often with sarcasm/humour/evasiveness - and blame the man for not being a real man for allowing it to happen. - this comes from the same of thought form stable that the blames the female victim for "asking for it" by not being sufficient sweet/amenable/compliant or whatever.

You could role play it - and video some vox pop reactions to the video - and the advice they give the victim on how s/he should have reacted, or bystanders should have reacted. Or how you would have reacted. Or what you thought was the underlying cause, and what could be a lasting solution.

Put all the prejudices/hang-ups out there as expressed by people reacting to the role play so that the reactions become part of the role play experience. Actors responding to the advice given from the audience - harassing a member of the audience - also role played - who gives "the WRONG answer".

Confuse people by implying they are implicated in the violence - it was there fault it happened because they did nothing. Break the conventional performer/detached observer convention.` YOU knew your neighbour was being beaten up, didn't you?

etc.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 04:49:47 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

Moving off DV but along similar lines in terms of communicating issues with personal impact - digital stories like this one have a great impact in raising awareness and personalising an issue that most people choose to avoid or stereotype.

The difficulty is getting people to care about issues that they think have nothing to do with them and never will.

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 05:14:00 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 0)

And one on disability - don't know how to embed from facebook though.

Accessibility of public transport - Julie

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 15th, 2011 at 05:19:56 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (none / 1)

Here is an idea on that theme:

create a site dedicated to gathering stories about how the cuts are affecting you and your dear ones. (With step-by-step guides for common cell-phones/webcam solutions.)
a campaign to get people to tell how the cuts are affecting them - Speak out! - through the site in question. Pamphlet/letter: "We know that the cut of [insert social service] leads to [insert consequence] but we need you to tell the world what that means in practice. Check the stories and upload your own at [site]" Poster with picture of Cameron: "He stole your money to hand it to their banker friends. He is counting on your silence, do not give it to him! Speak Out!"
facebook group, twitter with twitter tag #speakout, and all that jazz
plan activities that can be launched if and when it takes of, like a symbolic handover of the stories (one cd each, to make a visual impact) or a big demonstration with the stories running on big screens.

The point is to get people angry at what is being done to them rather then to feel shame for their situation. By placing their stories front and center, you illustrate in action that the union is for them. You also get the effect that those that upload their stories are likely to market the campaign to their friends. Hopefully some videos goes viral and are then easy to run by the newscorps (include permission rights to that effect when uploading) to illustrate the news.

Use if you like. At least it is not a poster that has been here since the 50ies...

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Mar 17th, 2011 at 04:20:10 PM EST
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Re: Effective advertising? (4.00 / 2)

Exactly, a positive campaign carries a feeling of "we can do it" and gives ways for individuals to join forces with each other by joining the campaign.