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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.
b3ta.com links
Paddy Power have a new and very clever adMod edit: Swapped out for kittens due to reasons detailed below
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".
Classic fail.
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.
"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
In my experience it is best to start by questioning yourself:
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
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
(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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The difficulty is getting people to care about issues that they think have nothing to do with them and never will.
Accessibility of public transport - Julie
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
So maybe
European Tribune - Effective advertising?
In particular, the session aims to look at how we can communicate the impact of the 'austerity' cuts on women.
Should be
In particular, the session aims to look at how we can organize women to act against the cuts on them.
Then you have a target audience - most women - you have an objective - getting them angry and acting - and just need to find the proper outlet - an activity that is meaningful, direct, fairly easy to do and generating good pictures.
So you need the right activity, proper information to get people angry and acting and social media to inform the participants of how the campaign is doing and where they can help out more. And some pre-written press releases.
Impromptu image: Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
Right now, you only need take Mervyn King's advice on an out group who everybody knows to hate and nail them; not just for being to blame for wrecking the economy, but also for not paying their fair share. Look at corporate tax rates, look at the avoidance of tax in havens.
Point out how little they pay for the money they charge interest at high rates for others to borrow. Why is paying tax for the little people ? Why is austerity only for little people ?
Anything more complicated gets lost in noise. keep to the Fen Causeway
since women are definitely doing the most double-dutying and spending quality time with their kids, ask them whether they want another generation in the same pickle.
using that poster from 1954 and captioning it with that message would be quite powerful, i think.
good luck with this, gender injustice demeans women, and demeans men even more. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Not forgetting the power of street art.
Just wish it were true..... keep to the Fen Causeway
Ad people will think it brilliant - but they are the least organized because they are well paid. As usual, ad people make ads for themselves, for their portfolio. If they are really good they will also increase 'sales', win the award they covet, AND move to an even higher paid job.
As you say, it depends on the people, i.e. the audience. What is the context of their experience? To what do they aspire? What or who do they admire? Who do they believe? What is the nature of their unhappiness? Why should they care? And can you say it in a headline like "We can do it" or "Your country needs you"?
IMHO the only solution to increase union organization, and it is a very risky option, is to focus on the deep-seated anger of social injustice. How? I don't know. You can't be me, I'm taken
Fantastically clever on a non-existent budget.
But effective? That would have to be measured by actual union uptake and policy change.
There's a standard round of ad industry awards, and I think if someone nominated that, it would have an excellent chance of winning something.
Whether winning an ad industry award counts as a policy win would be a different issue - but it's much better than the nonsense that usually gets feted at these events.
And you could then use the award to raise the profile of the ad. (Er - some mistake there, surely?)
I agree with your last point. You can't be me, I'm taken
and the patient recounting of how they were the only power the poor downtrodden sections of the workforce were ever able to use in order to move the proletariat out of the Dickensian conditions they suffered under, into a newly burgeoning middle class.
too many people think of corruption as soon as they think of the word 'union', yet in order to champion their electorate union spokesmen/women/leaders, they need to be smarter than the bosses, often with much lesser education to help them speechify convincingly.
re-reading Keir Hardie's biography, and maybe making an animated version... I read it in my teens, and later when JL spoke about 'working class hero' I knew exactly what he meant thanks to that book. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
As you know, my view is that instead of keeping rapacious companies in check by the threat of withdrawal of labour, the future is not to hit them on the production side by strikes: the international mobility of companies means they just go find more amenable labour.
The power lies in the withdrawal of purchase. Companies cannot go and find another consumer audience.
Unions still have an important role to play because they are inside the corporate machine. They remain the frontline of negotiation. But they have to learn (as being discussed here) to harness the game-changing possibilities of much larger communities online. You can't be me, I'm taken
the next step of global consumer boycotts looks tantalisingly within future reach...
then you'd see some more justice, although companies like monsanto have previewed this, by locking in 3rd world farmers to contracts, driving many to suicide.
poor sods... 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Ontwapenend = disarming
The whole of the Netherlands was talking about it. But effective? The PSP party doesn't exist any more, and merged with other parties, becoming GroenLinks, still well presented in Dutch Parliamanet.
MJ Delaney (left) is responsible for Newport State of Mind, a Welsh-flavoured Youtube parody of Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z. How do you make a video go viral, asks Observer editor John Mulholland? "We didn't make it with a masterplan, we made it for our friends, and friends of friends to enjoy."Digital agencies who charge "millions" to advise brands on viral videos would have killed it, she says. "It was a happy accident." The reason that the once-dominant social network Bebo has died is because it was flooded by commercial brands, she says.
MJ Delaney (left) is responsible for Newport State of Mind, a Welsh-flavoured Youtube parody of Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z. How do you make a video go viral, asks Observer editor John Mulholland? "We didn't make it with a masterplan, we made it for our friends, and friends of friends to enjoy."
Digital agencies who charge "millions" to advise brands on viral videos would have killed it, she says. "It was a happy accident."
The reason that the once-dominant social network Bebo has died is because it was flooded by commercial brands, she says.
Thanks to everyone for comments and tips, the session went well.
I'm going to vote for ¨no¨.
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