We recently completed an exciting piece of conceptual and creative development work for the Department of Health’s 2012 umbrella campaign to help the Nation make healthier choices and save money. This campaign has two key strands – healthy eating and reduction in alcohol consumption.

Our team went in search of how to optimise the allure and accessibility of a range of new information including ideas and tools for simple, healthy lifestyle changes. We delved into the audience mindset to explore self perceptions, what really appeals and engages, looked at their information needs and how best to deliver compelling encouragement and supporting messages.

To gain a thorough understanding of our key audiences we interviewed a range of individuals and groups – often about very personal and challenging health and wellbeing issues. We also asked individuals to complete their own tasks outside of the face to face sessions. This combined interview and task-focussed approach enabled us to get beyond surface or stock responses, to elicit great detail in our findings and broadened the scope of our recommendations to DH.

This was a complex challenge.  Through considered and open dialogue we were able to gain a deep understanding of attitudes and motivations to travel during Games time; working closely with M&C Saatchi we were able to unearth fresh insights, evolving the campaign and preparing the travelling public for some of the significant travel restrictions.

Further, our involvement in these projects allowed us to explore how the growing awareness and shifting opinions around the 2012 Games, with both the business and general public audiences, has impacted on their communication needs in the build up to the Olympics.

To help guide development of one of their key strategies, City and Hackney PCT asked Define to bring our expertise to the task of doing just that.

To hear what the key audience discussed amongst themselves; to really understand their sexual norms, pressures and practices, we empowered a range of young people to become peer researchers.  They explored key questions and issues with their friends and fed back to our researchers, who established supportive keyworker-style relationships with them.

Following a good few months of hard work pinning down our illusive and often mercurial audience, we were able to identify key insights to inform the development of C&H’s sexual health strategy; encouraging greater uptake of services by young people through more up-to-date and relevant sexual health messaging.

For us, this study re-inforced our understanding that the needs of young people from backgrounds frequently inaccessible to other research approaches, can often fall by the wayside. Our ‘keyworker’ ethic enabled us to represent the views, experiences and needs of this hard to reach group and so more accurately inform policy and provision improvement. We complimented this grounded, practical approach with our knowledge of national initiatives and a wealth of experience in delivering sensible, strategic recommendations.

We’ve been working with G2 and Vodafone Global to understand the creative territory for a new campaign with international reach.

Our clients needed direction on emotional territory, creative approach and messaging hierarchy to ensure the work that they develop does its job to present both a compelling offer and reflect well on the brand.

The topic may not seem challenging on the surface – but this is a busy, professional target with low emotional interest in this complex and functional category – and the noise of other consumer and business advertising is hard to cut through.

Spring boarding from three solid initial creative ideas, however, we were able to: identify a key insight around which to base the campaign, guidance on creative parameters – key do’s and don’ts, deliver a prioritised package of messages (with nuances between audience sub-groups), recommend key touchpoints (times and channels for reach) and provide further audience context to inspire thinking about supporting campaign activity in the UK and Europe.

We spoke to a range of Health Foundation stakeholders including top-level executives, academics, clinicians, politicians, journalists, evaluators and technical providers. The complexity of the task meant we needed to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the service improvement field and the current challenges facing the healthcare sector more broadly, as well as a thorough understanding of the complexities of the healthcare system in the UK. Drawing on previous projects with DH, the NHS and NPSA, we were ideally

The mixed priorities and challenges in two local authority after-school clubs in which I recently completed doctoral research, demonstrate the complexity of operationalising Solomon’s call to action. I looked at staff, parents’ and children’s views of the purposes and priorities of the provisions, playworkers’ jobs and children’s playtime. What I found was that ideas about our young people, and the constraints put on adults working with them, are in the midst of, and merit further, re-thinking.

After-school clubs allow working and some non-working parents to know their children are safe and looked after – kept away from what is increasingly (or increasingly deemed to be) a threatening world (ergo, children must be protected at all times). Not unrelated, the after school clubs also gave the children a range of opportunities to play and socialise they may otherwise have missed out on. As one playworker put it ‘we didn’t have or need places like this when we were young to play and build our confidence…we played outside with the kids on our road.’

Committed and enthusiastic staff supervise the children and keep them safe, follow procedures, maintain order and provide a range of developmental experiences. Listening to the children and empowering their self-direction was a top priority for most. Staff and parents repeatedly told me how important this was – for the children to feel valued and to build their skills and confidence for life in a challenging world.

Playwork philosophy promotes the vital ability and necessity of children directing significant aspects of their social and emotional development. This requires low-intervention on the part of adults. On the other hand, health and safety policies, childcare regulations, and the like – not to mention litigious leanings – promote risk avoidance, overwhelming levels of supervision, and thus the removal of space and flexibility in which to listen and respond to children’s choices. So staff are hamstrung in their efforts to supervise and protect, and to facilitate and empower.

Amongst the many urgent moves needed to develop children’s happiness and wellbeing, we, and our children, would benefit from some candid self-reflection on how, as individuals, families, professionals, community members and policy makers, we restrict not only children’s voices but the avenues through which it is possible to respond to their voices and choices. If we’re to listen to the voices of our young more, and act on those voices, we must continue to push for recognising children as active citizens, with rights and valuable input to be shared, and actively support those professionals who are in positions to respond to those voices. Perhaps, it is time to challenge our imperative?

Hannah Henry Smith

Earlier in the year Abercrombie & Fitch got their knickers in a twist when Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino, a star on MTV’s reality show Jersey Shore generally behaved like a complete idiot for the entertainment of over 2 million viewers whilst rather conspicuously wearing A&F clothes. They reportedly paid him a ‘substantial’ amount of money not to wear the brand, saying that his behaviour and lifestyle was antithetical to A&F’s ‘aspirational’ values.

And take Anders Breivik, the Norwegian rightwing extremist who went on a bomb and gun fuelled killing spree in July this year, killing 77 people in the name of his deranged anti-immigration ideology. Following his arrest, several photographs appeared of him being ferried to and from the courthouse and given the amount of media scrutiny he was subject to, it was not long before his dress sense became a subject of speculation. The fact he had been seen in two different Lacoste sweaters indicated a certain soft-spot for the French brand. Much to the company’s chagrin it later emerged that Brievik had actually mentioned the clothing brand at several points in his sprawling manifesto, praising their ‘conservative’ colours and suggesting this attire as a suitable uniform for any would-be followers. Needless to say Lacoste made a formal request to the Norwegian authorities asking that they not allow Breivik to be photographed wearing any more of their clothes.

Furthermore, in the aftermath of the riots this August, sportswear company JD Sports took quite a battering – both literally in the sense that over £700K of merchandise was looted from their stores nationwide, and from a PR perspective. It didn’t take long for commentators to note the ‘popularity’ of JD Sports amongst looters, and even less time for members of the public to start equating the hoodie-wearing criminals with the JD brand. Just trawling some of the online forums it becomes quickly apparent that JD Sports has a lot of ground to make up, when comments such as this are being made: “[The looters] like cheap, nasty, tacky polyester tracksuits and trainers cos they themselves are cheap, nasty and tacky people to begin with!”.

It seems that even with the best planning and marketing teams, brands will take on a life of their own once they’re out in the real world…

Lucy Bush, Research Manager

This led me to wonder – why would a sector so dependent on social altruism fail to truly adopt the fastest growing social phenomenon on the Internet and with it, the opportunity to really connect to its supporters?
Charities have been reliably slow off the marks in accepting new marketing tools. And, once a ‘newfangled’ method has battled its way into a marketing manager’s armoury it’s guaranteed a much longer shelf-life than its private sector counterparts. Think unsolicited telemarketing fundraising call on a Friday night!

Historically, this lethargy could have been legitimately excused because of lack of resources and general marketing scepticism in the Third Sector. But are these arguments now valid in 21st Century Britain and in relation to social media?

Social media is actually a cost-effective use of marketing spend, with potential reach and ROI huge. Its use is an investment in the future generations of donors and campaigners who will soon not have known life without the Internet. However, more important than the trends and measureable facts, social media replaces hypodermic syringe media with the power to hold conversations with supporters, connect with them in meaningful ways and ultimately build loyalty and retention.

So what is going on?

There are daring leaders in the sector who have successfully leapt into the social media arena and reaped the benefits for their bravery. In partnership with the 12 most popular video bloggers in the country, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has turned itself from the least well known charity among youths into the most actively supported online charity in just 3 years. They achieved this by engaging bloggers in an online co-creation project which went on to produce the number one ‘most viewed’ video on YouTube in 7 countries promoting RNLI and reached 12% of 15 to 20 year olds in the UK. When was the last time a DM campaign performed that prolifically? In May this year National Trust also launched their own online community MyFarm recruiting 2,000 cyber-farmers in its first 2 weeks despite a £30 membership fee. Once signed up, farmers are invited to make decisions about the running of a real working farm on The Wimpole Estate, Cambridgeshire via the on-line forum and voting facility. Just 48 hours after launch, MyFarm generated more than 30 million opportunities worldwide to see the project across traditional media channels. Again proving that social media is newsworthy!

These examples alone scream that genuine engagement in social media activity is one phenomenon charities and their supporters can’t afford to neglect. Reach is beyond what has previously been thought possible, ROI potential is enormous and the quality of conversation between supporter and organisation and resulting content is in a totally different league.

As Farmer Rick of MyFarm explains “[MyFarm] is evidence of a large established organisation like the National Trust being prepared to do something different, with heart and humour”. It would be great for more charities to find their social roots and plant them firmly in the middle of a social network. Then with time and nurture, to be able to benefit from the fruits so many other organisations are already enjoying.

Click here to read more about the success of National Trust’s MyFarm.

Sarah Salisbury is a Senior Researcher at Define with extensive 3rd sector experience.

Moderator: Talk to me about this idea of ‘responsible smoking’, what does it mean to you?

Respondent: Nuffin

Moderator: So the idea that smokers nowadays smoke more responsibly doesn’t resonate with you?

Respondent: What does resonate mean?

Moderator: Ok, do you know the way people now smoke outside work and aren’t allowed to smoke in clubs and pubs…

Respondent: Yeah, do I ever…I hate that

Moderator: Ok, so that means, y’know, that people are sort of more responsible in the way they smoke…right?

Respondent:  Right…Does it?

Moderator: Yeah, because they don’t smoke around their children – it’s not good to smoke around children…

Respondent: Who says?

Moderator: What?

Respondent: I always smoked around my children – it hasn’t hurt them and they all smoke

Moderator: Oh, but if you smoke inside you always leave the door open don’t you?

Respondent: No, why?

Moderator: Oh, it doesn’t matter

Respondent:  Anyway, there will be a cure for it soon

Moderator: What’s that?

Respondent: Y’know, everything…

Moderator: Ok, I s’pose we dont need to say much else, thanks for that, let’s finish there…