A public awareness campaign is a set of planned, well-organised public activities, intended for a specific period of time and aimed at a specific target group. The result is to raise people's awareness of a specific problem. To draw attention to an existing or emerging problem, often trivialised, swept under the carpet.
The greatest achievement and hope of any social campaign is to change perceptions and thinking about a social problem. Above all, however, it is to actually change attitudes towards that problem, to try to solve it. The most common approach when planning and creating a campaign is to use advertising techniques and tools. Of course, we should not confuse or use interchangeably the terms advertising/social campaign and advertising/commercial campaign.
- Advertising / commercial campaign.
It has a very shallow desired level of change. It is usually a behavioural change that the producer wants to exert on consumers, such as changing the brand of a car or changing the brand of a favourite ham. The nature of the advertising message is pleasurable. The product even has to be associated with pleasure and pleasant feelings. Commercial advertising shows that the benefits of buying an advertised product or service are achieved immediately, you buy and you have! The main aim of advertising is to gain the sympathy and trust of as many customers as possible. And thus to increase sales. Budgets, usually high, allow for advertising campaigns on a grand scale. After all, the budget is regarded as an investment that will pay off with increased sales of the advertised items.
- Advertising/social campaign.
In contrast to commercial advertising, the message and the assumed level of change following a social campaign is very profound. Above all, social advertising is oriented and focused on the abandonment or hiving off of certain behaviours in favour of others, social sensitivity. The campaign is often shocking, unpleasant, even aversive in nature. The subject matter itself is usually heavy, difficult. It touches on things that people do not want to talk about, think about, that they prefer to repress (e.g. domestic violence). The benefits of social campaigns tend to be delayed in time, they are a future prospect (e.g. if you stop drinking over time the changes on your liver will reverse). Campaigners are activists, sensitive and responsive, wanting social change, wanting to help others. However, when it comes to budgets for single adverts or whole social campaigns, it is much lower than for commercial activities. Often these are non-profit activities.
How a social campaign is created.
1. survey
Campaign developers should discuss and plan the campaign in detail. First of all, several questions need to be answered about the campaign theme. Is it worth running? What for? Is the theme relevant? What results do we want to achieve through the campaign?
2. preparation
At this stage, it is very important to define the final objectives of the campaign in concrete terms. Above all, it is also necessary to determine the audience, i.e. who we are targeting. This is very important because it is on the basis of this guideline that we select the stylistic, technical and vocabulary measures. This phase of work should also include a campaign slogan and detailed planning of specific activities.
3. creation
Right now is the time to write a proper script, organise the set, locations, actors or people to perform. Once all the organisational things have been decided, it is time to produce the social film or series of films. Later, post-production, picture and sound editing.
4 Emission
The finished film can be deployed to exploitation channels: television, website, social media, LED billboards. Sometimes, in parallel with the film, other materials are also created to promote the social campaign - leaflets, slogans on the streets, announcements on the radio.
At the Simple Frame studio, we created several films for social campaigns. Each of them drew people's attention to a different social problem, made them think, made them undertake some reflections. The biggest challenge in such productions is a strong display of specific emotions. An eloquent, unmistakable image, a message. Often these are strong, unpleasant emotions. However, this is precisely what is intended and deliberate. By saying an emotional shock, by showing extremely bad situations, we want to get people's attention. Social projects show and give a real feeling, not theorise about a problem. They are films that have a strong impact. And that is precisely their premise.
Because the soup was too salty.
To date, there have been a number of Polish campaigns that have made a great impression on the public and which could not be ignored.
The most well-known is definitely the campaign about the very difficult but unfortunately not uncommon phenomenon of domestic violence. The campaign's catchphrase caught on from the start and grew into a colloquial slogan. Although the production took place in 1997, everyone still associates the project today.
- Campaign name: "Stop domestic violence".
- 1997 production year
- The broadcaster of the campaign is the All-Poland Emergency Service for Victims of Family Violence "Blue Line".
- Campaign slogan: "Because the soup was too salty".