Presentation notes

UK Tactics

Due to the high level of internet access in the UK, these guerrilla tactics will be organised through websites and social networking, which takes me on to the online presence of our campaign:

We will have a;

Twitter account - so people can see what’s going on with our company and any demonstrations that are up and coming.

Blog/Website – for the same reasons but with additional information and links to buy t-shirts for demonstrations.

By people wearing the t-shirts before and after the demonstration will further promote our campaign, by people literally wearing it on their sleeves.

Facebook – To disseminate our message through people ‘liking’ our page and interacting with followers

We have a selection of tactics that will reach all of our intended audiences:

Guerrilla Tactics – Policy makers, the media, and the public

Synchronised Flash mobs: Activists performing mass sit-downs in major areas of the UK at the same time, EG Railway stations in London during rush hour.

By sending press releases to newspapers and media organisations, it will reach the media. By it being in the media, it will reach the policy makers, potential donors, potential audiences, and the public around at the time of the flash mobs will be reached on a physical level.

(Next slide, Libya tactics - Elin)

Presentation T-shirts 2

Voila!

Our campaign t-shirts!

The globes aren't 100% spherical, or 100% geographically correct. But they're a relatively accurate representation of the t-shirts that people would be able to buy and demonstrate in to raise awareness of our campaign. (Slogan to be added tomorrow).

In an earlier post I discussed t-shirt printing costs, using the same website as before (www.garmentprinting.co.uk) I put in an enquiry as to what printing would cost if there was a logo instead of just text, the unit price came to £1.89 (for 1000), and including delivery (£50) came to £1940.00.

Although this is slightly more than the previous quote, some/all of this would be offset by selling them for more than the unit cost, which would cover the cost, delivery, and create revenue for our campaign.

It's presentation day tomorrow, and after collecting everyone's slides (after a brief internet-crisis at Falmouth - or rather lack of internet due to a power surge - good job I brought my laptop!) I have put them all into a style that looks rather professional, showing that we mean business!

We have had a rehearsal today (another due tomorrow, before the presentation itself), where we have hopefully eradicated any major teething issues, and another is due tomorrow before the presentation itself.

Here's to all our hard work!

Presentation T-shirts

Today I bought t-shirts for us to wear in our presentation, and also to show a mock-up of the potential t-shirts that would be worn as part of demonstrations (and) to raise awareness. They're quite large, although being a Medium (Men's 39-41" chest - No unisex sizing available at the supermarket where I bought them).

I'll sketch up some ideas for designs for our rehearsal tomorrow before I get to work with my permanent markers! There will be one spare so it could possibly be 'leave behind literature' after the presentation?

Comment with what you think!

Festival stalls

Following on from a PR tactic to have an 'Ensure your Cause' stalls at festivals to raises awareness (and possibly revenue through public donations), I have been researching the possibility of this through researching the cost of having a stall at the Glastonbury music festival.

I have found that the price of having a stall is dependent on the type of stall, along with size. But there is leniency towards charities, which means that there is a possibility that we would be able to do this for Glastonbury, but without physically applying there is no definite answer:

"It is Festival policy to give as many trading opportunities as possible to charitable

organisations even when it would be financially considerably more beneficial to

offer the same site to commercial organisations. "

(http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/_assets/pdf/educational-resources/27Trading.pdf)

T-shirt pricing/costs

One of our UK tactics to raise awareness of 'Ensure a Cause' to both donors and potential users of the box is to have flash mobs performing demonstrations in key locations around the UK (eg, Paddington Station) at a synchronised time - see a previous post for example of this gaining media attention.

Within this idea, there is the possibility that actisvists could wear 'Ensure a Cause' t-shirts to further promote the campaign.

As we would need a rough ballpark figure in order to make the idea of activists wearing 'Ensure a Cause' t-shirts in flash mobs viable within our £10,000 limit for the campaign I have been researching the costs of t-shirt printing; this could possibly be

offset slightly by activists being able to buy/make a donation for the t-shirts on the website before the demonstration(s).

I have found a UK website - http://www.garmentprinting.co.uk/ - that quoted £1771.25 with delivery for 1000 men's crew-neck t-shirts with a text slogan in black across the front, with a unit price of £1.69 before delivery.

I have found an American site that are charging $1,915 for 500 t-shirts, which relates to roughly £1196.33 (http://www.brokenarrowwear.com/quote/QT1100.aspx?BAItem=6883). Although it is good to know roughly how much this would be for 500, and should there be any demonstrations organised in America it is a company that we could outsource to.

In regard to UK PR tactics, there be additional shipping costs should we get the shirts from America in order to use them for UK demonstrations,.

As the possibility of having a well-known pop song to promote ourselves was discussed yesterday, I think a conclusion was reached that it may not be suitable, for every time it was played a royalty fee would have to be paid to the respective owners of the track.

Flash Mobs

To follow up ideas stemming from yesterday's lecture and seminar, which included ideas of how to capture the attention of the public and the media, I have been doing some research into flash mobs. as I feel they would be a good way to raise awareness of our product.

My idea (which I am yet to clear with Elin, Ben, and Bryony) is to have flash mobs which assemble in major cities (city centres, train stations etc), which perform mass 'sit-downs' - possibly wearing t-shirts with our logo/slogan- in order to promote our message of peaceful protest.

Flash mobs in the UK in recent years include 'The Big Freeze' on 13th March 2010; in which people stood still for five minutes in cities at 12.30PM across the country (allegedly the biggest in the country), in order to promote WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) and to raise awareness of global warming. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roTaEnI-Yg for the Dundee Big Freeze flash mob.

http://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/5060272.Big_Freeze_flashmob_strikes_Kendal/

Another 'mob' in recent years happened in 2007; where 4000+ clubbers danced in Victoria Station. It was organised through website mobileclubbing.com. Although it wasn't to necessarily promote awareness or a product, it shows that specific audiences can be organised to support something that they believe in.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391632-4000-flash-mob-dancers-startle-commuters-at-victoria.do

As the UK country profile shows that the majority of the population use the internet, and the above article showing that a large group of people can be organised for such an event through websites. A website organising our flashmob(s) could be promoted through peaceful protest organisation sites (http://www.defendpeacefulprotest.org/), or social networking sites, especially Facebook.com, as 2010 figures showing that around 26m people use it in the UK (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10713199).

I feel that a flash mob would be a good way to promote/raise awareness of our protest pack. - The only financial limitations would be the cost of advertising on Facebook, and by printing t-shirts, unless the organisation website encourages people to make their own for the demonstrations.

avaaz.org

The most recent breakthrough that our group have had in regard to communicating our message of peaceful protest is through Katia's discovery of website www.avaaz.org (which Elin also appears to be a member of!)

I think that this will be useful in my area of the presentation (UK country profile), as the majority of the UK have internet access (see country profiling in an earlier post), and would therefore be an effective way of communication with our target audience.

Audience-scapes

I am currently trying to find a similar website/service to that of Audiencescapes.org that was used in Friday's lecture (to describe media use in Kenya) in order to find out which is the most popular media in the UK and in what areas (Urban/Rural etc).

I haven't found one as of yet, but I will keep on trying!

Amnesty International

As part of my set tasks before our next meeting, I am to research Amnesty International (Amnesty.org.uk) and methods they use to increase awareness of their campaigns.

Upon visiting the site there is extensive lists of campaigns, but none seem to list the PR tactics involved in any individual cases. Saying this, there is information saying that they use workshops and even have an award for 'Young Human Rights Reporter' (http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10679). By utilizing an approach such as competitions within schools/colleges/universities promoting peaceful protests would be a way of raising awareness of our product and what it stands for.

I will suggest this to the group and see what they think!

UK Country profile

Posted UK country profile (thus far), as suggested in today's meeting:

UK

Population – 62,348,447 (July 2010)

Literacy rate – 99% (Of those aged 15 years or over that have had five years or more in education)

Average 16 years spent in education Male – 16 years, Female – 17 years

Average age – 39.8 (Male – 38.6, Female –40. 9)

Religion: Christian -71.6%,

- Muslim 2.7%, Hindu 1%, Other 1.6%. Unspecified or none – 23.1%. (2001 census)

Past orientated culturally

Power Distance

Minimised inequality

High vs Low Context

Low context; There is more meaning placed in language code and requires a clear description

Media Access and Control

The UK is home to the BBC, the largest broadcasting corporation in the world. There are also cable channels (such as SKY) which allow viewers to access channels across the world.

Over 51.444 million internet users (out of population of over 62m), it is ranked 7^th globally according to cia.gov, this means that UK citizens lean more towards audio/visual media.

Information from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html

Group Meeting

Third out-of-session meeting today, and a lot seems to be getting done (which is nice!) The meeting consisted of Bryony, Elin, and myself today as others in the group could not make it.

There was a lot to share about Ben and Elin's trip to Shelterbox this morning, most importantly the methods that they use to gain awareness (such as workshops with the Scouts). There was also general discussion of how the project was developing and theories that we could apply to our product in order to fulfil the brief.

At this point in the meeting we thought it sensible to create a provisional draft of powerpoint slides that would feature in our final presentation, and an outline of who would cover which subjects within it.

My delegated tasks include: a country profile of one of our target audiences (The UK); a profile information on Amnesty International (who we could hypothetically partner with) of whom I will endeavour to attain a press pack/information pack; and input into the presentation area of 'how is this different?', when relating to our product.

Whilst there's a fair bit done, I feel there's still a lot more to go!

Independent study

As part of general research for our presentation, I looked at the disaster-relief charity Shelterbox for some idea of marketing/funding.

A possible method of income would be through online donations such as Gift Aid, which is one resource of income of Shelterbox (http://www.shelterbox.org/donate.php).

In terms of promotion, because one of the countries we will market our product for will be Western, and have a high level of internet connectivity. A simple way is to make sure that our product is Search-Engine Optimised, meaning that when people type 'student protests' (for example) into Google, then our company is one of the top websites that come up as a result.

On the theory side of things (which was one of our tasks before the next meet-up), I am finding it difficult to find a framework that we could apply our idea to. I have however found a possible definition for our type of PR activity, as we are aiming at protests:

"Situational: when often a single issue or situation drives communication - like international pressure group activities" (Tench, 2006: 115)

I will continue to look through Exploring Public Relations to try and find applicable theory.

Sources - www.shelterbox.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShelterBox, Tench, R. Yeomans, L, 2006. Exploring Public Relations. Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh.

Group Meeting Week Two

Today (Friday 25th February) was the second meeting of our presentation group to further discuss the ideas from last week.

My task prior to this meeting was country profiles on the UK and France, as they were two possible target locations for our hypothetical product (protest survival kit).

In order to get this information I had to first refresh myself on what was involved in country profiling, for this I went to Exploring Public Relations by Ralph Tench and Liz Yeomans.

For information on the countries I went to the CIA factbook website for figures and statistics regarding population, male-female ratio, major religions, literacy levels, internet availability and other information.

Group meeting week one

Today was our first out-of-lecture meeting to discuss the product/service/campaign for our presentation. We had been in contact through the previous week with possible ideas and this was a chance to get feedback on them as a group.

The two ideas that were most prominent were promoting dental floss to countries adopting Western cultures (soft drinks, cigarettes etc), who also have little knowledge available on dental hygiene.

The second idea, which will probably be our presentation topic is that of a 'protest survival kit', this would work on a similar premise to the disaster-relief charity Shelterbox, but we will have to look further into this before our next meeting.

My tasks before our next meet-up are to do country profiles on the UK and France, as they are two countries which have seen protests in recent months. I will use Exploring Public Relations by Ralph Tench and Liz Yeomans for the headings for Country Profiling, and websites such as the CIA World Factbook (on cia.gov) to get country information.