YWCA USA advertising plan background

Transcription

1 Background Last year, a new brand was developed for the YWCA USA. It consisted of a new public face (our logo) that put our mission eliminating racism and empowering women front and center. This logo also represents a change in the organization: a refocusing on the two key mission elements that have been at our core since the inception of the YWCA. Over the past few months, YWCAs around the country have adopted the new brand look. Our communities have started to see the change. We ve put up new signs, printed new brochures and business cards, and told our story to various constituencies: our volunteers, supporters and staff, as well as local media. Now the time has come to tell our story to a larger audience. Who is our Audience? In theory, it s the entire US population. Everyone can benefit from hearing our message, whether they re young or old, male or female, rich or poor, black, brown or white. And every one of them could do something to help further our cause. But that takes money. Serious money. One 30-second commercial on CBS primetime costs $250,000 or more. We all know Nike wants us to Just Do It. But it s taken them billions of dollars over the past 23 years to make sure we know. It goes without saying that our resources are dwarfed by that. So, what can we do? First, we narrow our target audience. If we can t speak to the entire US population, who can we reach? What group of people is most critical to our future? Everyone agrees that we need an infusion of young, energetic women who can learn and grow to be the next leaders of the YWCA. Does that mean we want to ignore the 53-year-old donor or the fabulous retired teacher who volunteers each Tuesday? Of course not. But faced with the reality of our budget and our needs for the future, we chose year-old women as our primary audience. That loyal core of YWCA volunteers and donors who already know about us became our secondary audience. Where do we Find Them? According to a recent study of year olds, internet and television are by far the most fequently used media. A September 2004 study found that 18- to 34-year-olds are far more apt to log on to the Internet (46%) and watch TV (35%), than read a book (7%), turn on a radio (3%), read a newspaper (also 3%) or flip through a magazine (less than 1%).

2 And year olds spend a lot of time online and watching TV -- sometimes simultaneously. They spend more time with TV and the Internet than any other media -- 41% spend 2 to 5 hours a day online, and 52% spend 2 to 5 hours a day watching TV, whereas 78% spend less than 1 hour reading the newspaper and 75% spend less than 1 hour reading magazines. And what do they watch? It s not Lifetime movies and 60 Minutes. We went to the cable networks with the highest concentration of year old females of all races: MTV and BET.

3 What is Our Message? Face it, we all like nothing better than to talk about ourselves. It s human nature. And advertisers often spend a lot of time talking about themselves. It s sometimes known as that s why advertising because the phrase that s way serves as a weak attempt to link the advertiser s product to the audience s concerns or needs. In the end, this type of advertising is really all about the advertisers own interest and does little to engage, involve or motivate the listener. Our message, our mission and our brand are all about two things: eliminating racism and empowering women. We could have chosen to simply say that in a clever and engaging way. And then what? A broader group of people may have known more about us for the short period of time that we can afford to advertise. But, we saw an opportunity to do more. We saw an opportunity to advance our mission and our brand at the same time. We saw a chance to awaken our audience to the issues of racism and oppression of women, call them to action and help them understand that the YWCA is an organization firmly linked to those issues. We d crossed over from being simply brand advertisers to also being social marketers. What is Social Marketing? Brand advertising creates an image. It creates awareness of a product or organization in order to maximize its recognition, create a preference for it and ultimately sell more of it. Social marketing differs from brand advertising in that social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors to benefit the target audience and the general society. This technique has been used frequently in the United States for such diverse topics as drug abuse, heart disease and organ donation. Social marketing was born as a discipline in the 1970s, when Dr. Philip Kotler, now the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Harvard s Gerald Zaltman realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to sell ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Steps to Behavior Change In order to get our audience to join in our efforts to eliminate racism and the oppression of women, we must help them change their own individual behaviors. The Steps to Behavior Change model was developed at Johns Hopkins and outlines the challenge that our advertising has before it. STEP 1: Knowledge The listener recalls specific messages, understands what the messages mean, can name the product or source of the message. STEP 2: Approval The listener responds favorably to the idea, discusses the issues with family or friends, believes that family, friends, and community approve of the idea and finally, approves of the idea herself. STEP 3: Intention Recognizes that addressing the issue can meet a personal need, intends to change personal behavior or consult the provider of the information. STEP 4: Practice Goes to a provider of information/supplies/services, begins to practice the behavior. STEP 5: Advocacy Experiences and acknowledges the benefits of practicing the behavior, advocates the practice to others, supports programs in the community.

4 Ready, Set, Advertise Before we talk about the advertising, let s review a few things: The Audience: Women The Messages: The Media: The Result: 1. Racism and oppression of women exist in today s society 2. You can make a difference 3. The YWCA can help you make that difference MTV, MTV2 and BET cable and online Help our audience take steps along behavioral change model. Now, the big decision. How do we tell our story to this audience so that they hear us? So that we break through the clutter of car and fashion advertising? So they pay attention? We accomplish that by making advertising that s relevant to their lives, that makes them think about their own actions, that demands to be heard because of the power and intensity of its message. Plus, with the budget issues that we talked about before, we have to make an impact and make it fast. A subtle nudge toward behavioral change won t do. This is our opportunity to push people. And we have to push hard. The Ads There are two television ads produced for this campaign. Unspoken shows the subtle ways racism is alive in our society. As the following scenes play, you hear haunting music and subtle, unidentifiable whispers: A white female customer enters a bank. The Asian-American teller smiles and offers to help her. The teller is ignored, and the customer walks to another teller. Two men neighbors in an apartment building approach their front doors at the same time. One is white, the other black. They ignore each other. Has the black man been hurt by previous slights or overt racism from his neighbor? Is the white man a supremacist or just a nice guy who d be friendly if given half a chance? We don t know. A grade-school Native American boy sits on a playground bench. The other children swarm around playing, talking with friends, having fun. He is ignored and isolated. A young African-American man gets on a bus and sits down next to an older Asian-American woman. She immediately gets up, uneasy about sitting next to him. The hurt in his eyes tells you that this isn t the first time someone has reacted in that way. At the end, a voice says: Just because it s not blatant, doesn t mean it s not racism. Make a difference. The YWCA logo and web address appear on the screen. Little Girls show the not so subtle ways women and girls are devalued in today s society. It uses the lyrics of rock, pop, hip-hop, rap and country music as a metaphor for society s attitudes and acceptance of those attitudes. Visually, this spot celebrates little girls their enthusiasm, friendships, innocence and spontaneity. While you watch these girls celebrate life, the music soundtrack talks about being a cheaten lyin bitch, being just another ho, and having the hottest bitch on the block. At the end, a voice says: The problem goes beyond music. The solution lies within you. Make a difference. The YWCA logo and Web address appear on the screen.

5 I understand what you re trying to do. But did you have to use such harsh language? Two thoughts about the language: 1. Harsh is in the ear of the beholder. This language is commonplace to young women today. They hear it at school, among their friends and in their music. That s part of the problem. As language evolves, words sometimes lose their bite; however, each time this happens, we re further down the path that says it s OK to call a woman a bitch and to act out toward her accordingly. 2. Because this language is commonplace for this group, we needed to give it back some of its power to help the audience understand the attitudes behind the words. No one will argue that it s painful and difficult to look at the precious, innocent faces of these little girls and hear the language that s been put with them. But it s the tension between the images and the words that drives our point home. What Happens Next? The television commercials will begin airing January 31. In mid-january in partnership with Viacom, we will publish an eight page custom magazine. It will include two full page ads for the YWCA that describe the mission, history and our stake in racism and women s empowerment issues. This is another way to set the stage for our advertising. These print ads, directed to our donors and volunteers, will be available in reprint for your use locally. Some of the custom published magazines will go to national supporters and you will have the opportunity to order up to 500 copies for your own distribution. Prior to the advertising, you need to ensure that your key constituents have the background information in this document as well as the materials that accompany it in this kit. Without this background information, the advertising could shock and confuse them. We ve not taken that possibility lightly. But, in sharing this plan within the organization and in research with consumers, we ve found strong support. Based on our qualitative research, young women in general are not shocked or confused by the messaging. They respond with uneasiness as we all do to Little Girls. However, it opens their eyes. They begin to question the music they listen to and their own usage of derogatory terms that have started to lose their meaning. In our research, we saw consumers move through the Behavioral Change Model outlined earlier in this document. Some just became more aware of the issues we re addressing, while others moved to action and interest in the YWCA and its mission. This is social marketing at work. And it is the work we ve chosen for ourselves and our organization. CD Volume 13 (1.3.05) Campaign Background Layout format in: Folder and file name: Folder: V13_Reference Materials Adobe PDF CampaignBackground.pdf