COMMUNICATION PILLAR 5

Advertising CampaignCommunication Brief

COM203-Advertising
Justin Eccleston, Missy Gaido, Rebecca Klug and Natalie Jaeger-Joint Authors* Fall 2011

The ability to develop and convey oral messages effectively

Justin, Missy, Rebecca and I worked together throughout the semester to present our advertising campaign for Carroll Universitys Volunteer Center. Research and talking points were direct contributions from me individually.

Melissa Gaido Justin Eccleston Natalie Jaeger Rebecca Klug

Communication Brief
Problems: The Volunteer Center already has an established position in the campus life. While they are a known entity they arent as well connected to the students as some of the other organizations are on campus. They need a better position or a better knowledge of what they do and how they help the local community as well as the campus. They already have a strong following of students but they want much more involvement from the rest of the student population. Two Main Problems: 1. The Volunteer Center needs more volunteers 2. The Volunteer Center needs more names for their email list. The Primary Target Audience is full time students on campus who have never volunteered or students that would opt-in to be notified of volunteer opportunities via email. Many of these students are unaware that Carroll University has a Volunteer Center. Many students use the Volunteer Center as a way to meet their service requirements to keep their Organization Status.

Consumer Insights: What motivates the campaign is the need to get more e-mails on the Volunteer Center list, which has currently been effective at reaching students interested in volunteer opportunities. The Volunteer Center is in need of more effective advertising that appeals to Carroll Students. From our survey of the students we know that Carroll Students use Email, Facebook, and Twitter more than any other social medium. We are focusing our strategy on these three outlets to increase utilization of the Volunteer Center Services. After surveying the students we also know that 73% of Carroll Students would volunteer for a chance to win a gift card.

Brand Imperatives: This brand is modern and savvy. We want to set ourselves apart by harnessing the power of social media. We acknowledge the importance of traditional methods of campaigns however; we know through our survey that there are too many opportunities in social media not utilize them. This is an advantage over the current strategies put into place.

Melissa Gaido Justin Eccleston Natalie Jaeger Rebecca Klug

Communication Objectives: After our message is received we want to: 1. Encourage students to sign-up to be on the Volunteer Centers e-mail list. Currently there are 300 students on the email list. 14% of the students we surveyed said they would be very likely to volunteer. 14% of the student population(3,535 students) is 495 students. So we would like to increase the number of students on the Volunteer Centers email list by 495 students by the end of the spring semester. 2. Strengthen the partnership between the Career Center and the Volunteer Center. From our survey we did not find any evidence that students found out about the Volunteer Center from the Career Center. 53% of students that had volunteered found out about the opportunity from a campus organization. 0% found out through the Career Center. We would like to see the percent of students that found out about the Volunteer Center through the Career Center to go up by 14% by the end of the spring semester. The Proposition or Selling Idea: For our campaign, our selling idea is to harness social media, strengthen awareness of the volunteer center and strengthen current campus partnerships. Our campaign encourages students to contact the Volunteer Center and opt-in to current email updates about volunteer opportunities. We will also use a co-marketing strategy to strengthen the relationship with the Career Center. We will provide the Career Center with bookmarks about volunteering where both departments are equally present. We want to teach the students about how volunteering can be beneficial to them with bookmarks. A Twitter manual has been developed with instructions and examples of tweets for Twitter. The twitter examples also have co-marketing with the Career Center in mind.

Support: Our strategies will be effective because we have researched the consumer using a survey. The survey answers the following: 1. How previous volunteers got involved with the center. 2. The types of internet services and social media students currently use. 3. The types of campus events students attend. 4. How likely the students are to volunteer right now.

Melissa Gaido Justin Eccleston Natalie Jaeger Rebecca Klug

5. To find out if the students who say they are unlikely to volunteer would volunteer for a chance to win a gift card. Our survey confirms that our advertising strategies that would be effective at reaching our targets, the students. We also know that some students that said they were unlikely to volunteer said they would do so for a gift card. Our strategies are backed by research and will be more likely to lead to new volunteers or students opting-in to receive email updates.

Creative Direction We will measure how effective each strategy might be to stimulate the desired response by surveying the students. For each media that we survey we need to see at least a 40% usage before we would recommend using that media. For Example: We found that 40% of Carroll Students regularly use Twitter. We will definitely focus on this medium as a useful outlet for the Volunteer Center to utilize. Regardless of the statistics, the Volunteer Center still needs to reserve a space on twitter and be present in that media outlet.

Carroll Students Using Twitter

Have Twitter Accounts Do Not Have Twitter Accounts

40% 60%

The look and feel of our message will be very modern and savvy yet simplistic and to the point. We will use Carroll University colors. We want to express the feeling of helpful that reciprocates from the sender to the receiver. Its not just that students can help others

Melissa Gaido Justin Eccleston Natalie Jaeger Rebecca Klug

but that the volunteer center can help you. For example, the Volunteer Center can help you gain experience to incorporate into your resume and the Career Center can help you add that experience to your resume. One slogan we will be using for a holiday campaign is Score Some Points with Santa. The slogan playfully uses alliteration and moves away from the traditional style of advertising the center currently uses.

Media Imperatives The survey asks about specific times of days that students are on campus, the locations they spend the most time on campus, the events they attend, their major, how often they check various social media. Through these questions we have determined which types of media we would like to use. The following are the types of media are included in the survey:
O

Twitter Facebook Email Google+

o o o

We are also using a poster to advertise an event where we will collect emails of students to receive updates about volunteer opportunities.