Targeted Social Media Video and Plan

Below you’ll find my communications plan that outlined the intended audience for this campaign along with communication strategy. I then executed this plan, creating a short video targeted towards Canadian post-secondary students to encourage them to be more active. I had to make some slight, on-the-go, adjustments to my strategy after completing the write up but I was happy with the final product.

For context, this was produced using a Samsung Galaxy S3 and free video editing software. The equipment and crew were sorely lacking but the concepts are what's important.  

Communications Strategy Write up

Communication Objectives

             The overall goal of my video will be to get Canadian post-secondary students to meet their recommended weekly physical activity goal, especially during exam time. That is the overall goal but more specifically I would like to achieve this by getting the students to understand the simple link between being physically active and how it can help improve their overall life quite easily. I don’t want students to feel like “oh my god I have to get my 20 minutes in”, instead I want to produce a video that gets students to remember/realize why being physically active is great and to seek out opportunities to be more active instead of it being a chore-like activity. One thing I would like to avoid with my video is coming off as an authoritative figure (memories of my parents yelling at me to get outside as a kid come to mind) because I don’t believe my target audience will respond well to that type of appeal. Instead the goal is to come off as a peer of sorts in the sense that I am a student and I will be presenting issues that relate to students specifically and how being more active will help address some of those issues. Another objective that is central to the main one is to effectively communicate how “screen time” leads to less physical activity because that ultimately is the main reason so many people don’t get enough physical activity, especially with the demographic I will be reaching. I will also try to present some tips or ideas for possible ways to be more physically active so that there is a type of “call to action” and not just me telling students they’re all lazy pricks. So overall, the goal is to get students to want to make a change in their daily lives to be more physically active, and spend less time in front of a screen, and to provide them with a few options of how they might achieve this.  

Theme                                    

            The main theme that I will be working with in my video will be student issues and how being physically active can solve, or at least help, these issues. I think I will start my video with something like “Procrastinating studying? Me too, might as well do something somewhat productive with your time” and then somehow incorporate common student issues such as depression, lack of sleep, social life, ‘the freshman 15’, and grades into the next 20-30 seconds so that I can then address how physical activity can help those specific issues with the rest of the video. I want to make the video humorous to some degree. The reason for this is I believe that my demographic of post-secondary students will respond best to a humorous approach as opposed to a more formal statistical approach or some monotone guy talking down to them telling them what to do. Because my video will be posted on Youtube the main audience will be accessing it on their leisure time so a video that is not entertaining will almost always be clicked past or watched for 10 seconds before being shut off; for this reason I believe humour to be the most effective method. On top of that, with my demographic being so active on social media, I’m hoping that a video that is funny and intelligent might get a share or two from my targets and spread to their peers who would also fall into the targeted demographic. On top of being humorous and addressing student related issues I would like there to be a nostalgic theme in the sense of eliciting memories from childhood of when playing was just what you did. I will attempt to incorporate things like music or visual cues that would bring back childhood memories; I’m not entirely sure how I’ll do this just yet but I want to incorporate it because I’m eyeing a slogan or key message that would tie in quite well I think (will address this later). 

Audience

            My targeted audience is Canadian post-secondary students (ages 18-24 roughly) of any gender. I’ve chosen this as my target audience because I am also a Canadian post-secondary student so my idea of being relatable becomes much easier as I am a peer of my audience. Also, more importantly, it stands out to me as a present issue in my life right now. I find, especially around this time of year with final projects and exams approaching, that students do not get anywhere close to the amount of physical activity they should be. I spend the majority of my day in front of my computer doing school work and when I’m not doing that I’m either playing video games or watching TV for the most part, and I actually consider myself to be fairly active (clearly not the case). Another reason this made sense as a targeted audience was that with this video being posted on Youtube it will likely spread mostly on various social media platforms and this demographic is extremely active on social media.

            In terms of a disposition analysis I think some common interests of postsecondary students would be social media, video games, TV, fashion, social life, and music. I think what they might expect from a video relating to their lack of physical activity would be to have statistics thrown at their face and a lame cliché about how all they do is lounge around (which is true but nobody can handle the truth). I will try to avoid the expected. Some things that this demographic cares strongly about are getting good grades, their group of friends, mental health, student debt, and the ominous ‘freshman 15’. In terms of a secondary audience I think that a good demographic for this would be teenagers (13-17) who look up to the main targeted demographic as their next step in life. I think this makes sense because the whole idea is to get postsecondary students to be physically active so naturally targeting high school students that will potentially be postsecondary students in the near future would be beneficial. I also would argue that there would be some overlap on common interests as well as the platform they would be reached most effectively on which would be social media.  

       I’ve put together 4 personas that I believe fit well into my targeted audience:

Max: Computer science student. Loves video games; doesn’t do much else. Enjoys eating Cheetos, but not while he games obviously as that would screw up his controller. Watches Twitch (literally streams of other people currently playing video games) when he’s not gaming. Gets majority of his news from Twitter or Facebook. Keeps to himself. Has little-to-no information on health related stuff like nutrition or activity levels hence why he doesn't think being active is important. 

Tyler: Business student. Big hockey and football fan. Plays hockey once a week for intramurals. Gets majority of his news from Reddit and Facebook (ie. Other people’s posts). Enjoys going out with friends to bars. Has a decent understanding of eating properly but doesn’t exercise on a frequent enough basis. 

Jennifer: Social sciences student. Very involved with her school work. Watches the evening news. Also likes her social media; mainly Facebook and Instagram. Used to dance but doesn’t since starting post-secondary; only at clubs with her friends. In her mind she doesn't have the time to exercise.

Sarah: Engineering student. Still lives with her parents. Hangs out with friends on the weekends. Plays video games on her computer. Enjoys reading on her ereader. Frequents Facebook every night. Eats what her parents feed her. Doesn’t really exercise at all other than walking to and from school because she doesn't think it's important.

Key Messages

            I want to keep my key messages very simple and minimalistic. The reason for this is I believe having a few clear and simple messages will be the most effective way to get my point across. My first message is the main one: You don’t spend enough time being physically active and this needs to change. The secondary message is simply that you spend too much time in front of screens. Another message that I won’t clearly state in the video, because I want the viewer to come to the conclusion themselves, but want to communicate is that being physically active is fun and should not be seen as a chore. I am playing with the idea of a slogan or image of the words “Remember play?” as in, does the viewer remember playing as a child (this is where the nostalgic element comes in), and then at the end of the video (if I can figure out how to do this) have the same words “Remember play” and then have the number ‘2’ drop down or appear somehow in between the two words so that it reads “Remember 2 play”.

Environmental Analysis       

Strengths:

-If done effectively I believe humour is the way to go because most people this age don’t like to be told what to do, they like to assess and make decisions for themselves, I don’t want to sound like a parent preaching ‘you need to go outside’.

-People already know that physical activity is a necessity, build on past related media and info.

-Already have previous work to look at, stats are available

-If the target group responds well they are social media active so they hopefully will push the message along

-More targeted than past examples that are usually strictly 0-18 or 18+

-Its online format targets those directly who should be outside not looking at a screen

-A lot of simple issues like stress and not sleeping well (super common in my target) can be helped by increased activity so hopefully it’s not too big a bridge to cross

Weaknesses:

-Has the opportunity to sound preachy like their parents telling them to get outside

-Kind of cliché like everyone gets it already stop telling me how to live my life

-Has to be really gripping and effective to actually do anything because people can just keep scrolling or go to the next page instead of being active  

Opportunities:

-Clearly there’s an opportunity to be more active as so much time is spent on screens every day

-Perhaps an opportunity to partner with participaction or the Olympic committee or something that’s relevant to my target audience

Threats:

-The world is increasingly more connected

-With school nowadays screens are a huge part so there’s the overlapping of leisure time and study both on screens

-Even socializing is online now

-You can do pretty much anything from a screen, so why go outside?

-Corporations pushing more screens constantly; for example you’re watching TV and then ads for apps come on and even sports events are pushing that you have 2 or 3 screens going at once

Tactics

            I will post my video to Youtube before March 23rd so that it is up and accessible to students who are preparing for exams just prior to exam season starting. My idea is to create a video that students would access while they are procrastinating studying so that the message will reach them at a relevant time and the calls to action can be put into effect immediately.