First of all, there's the target audience. Deciding on who the target audience is is bound up also with what we want to get out of the campaign. Do we want to convert people to the AFHR cause? Encourage donations? Or motivate existing supporters? Of course, if a campaign could do all three that would be ideal, but I'm not expecting to create the perfect awareness campaign, so we might have to be more specific! From my readings and research so far, I would expect that our best chance of success will be if we target people who are already sympathetic to the issues that AFHR engages in, but who either don't understand the Extraordinary Rendition issue or who don't know about AFHR's work. The aim of the campaign is therefore to direct people to the website where they can find out more about the issue and organisation (and even donate if they choose!)
It is here that we also start to discover the limitations of a viral campaign. Although cheap and with a potentially large audience, viral campaigns will target a younger market. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and it could be great for AFHR, but it has occurred to me previously that a potential audience for AFHR is the niche market known in political circles as "the doctors wives". This rather patronising term refers to middle aged, middle class women who are conservative politically but who are also kind and concerned with human rights. Their politics generally stems from their wealth and social circles, but they do not condone inhumane behaviour. This is a powerful group because, as the name suggests, they are connected to powerful people (or may be in positions of power themselves) and have previously been the turning point on issues such as the Vietnam War and refugees in Australia. AFHR should definitely consider targeting this group, but I don't think that viral marketing is the way to do it.
However, having said that, if we shoot our viral campaign on broadcast-quality high-definition video (I'll have to do some research into the best camera to use) then we can hope that, if the viral campaign achieves some success, we can then venture out into television. TV would be the best way to reach the middle aged women group, along with features in magazines and radio.
The other issue with viral marketing is that you have to give a reason for the receiver to pass it on. This will partly be helped by targeting already sympathetic viewers, who are more likely to want to share our campaign with their friends as a way of expressing their own views. However, if the 90 second ad engages people well enough, even those who were previously unsympathetic could be encouraged to pass it on. Engagement often comes down to an issue of emotion. Most virals are funny for this reason, engaging people's sense of humour. It would be a huge challenge to create a funny campaign around state-sanctioned torture, but I won't rule out the possibility just yet! We are more likely to engage with people with either shock value or a very moving piece.
These are the main challenges at the moment, in terms of creating the concept for our campaign. There will also be technical decisions to make (as touched upon above)... but those can wait for another month or so!
No comments:
Post a Comment