Remember our Elder Abuse campaign? You're not alone!

Back in June, the Government of Canada launched our Elder Abuse campaign for HRSDC.

We were really proud of this spot, and everyone who worked on it — at HRSDC, Acart, SOMA, and even the actors — felt that we were obligated to do our best for such an important and emotional issue.

Apparently Canadian viewers felt the same way. We just found out that, in research conducted by TNS Canadian Facts last fall, this campaign achieved an amazing 58% unaided recall among Canadian adults outside Quebec!



As you can see, the benchmark for federal government campaigns is 36% unaided. Our clients told us these are the best results they've ever seen.

Of course, with social marketing, it's not enough to be seen. The actions taken by viewers (including those who recalled the ad with prompting) show that the campaign was successful in getting people to talk about the issue:



As a taxpayer, you'll probably be happy to know that the ROI was good, too: 28¢ per recall, and $3.22 per action.

The reason Québécois were not included in this phone survey is because the campaign did not run there. The Province of Quebec was doing its own campaign on the issue at the same time.

We did, however, produce a French version as well (for the many francophones in the rest of Canada).

Kudos to everyone involved in this, an excellent example of doing Work That Matters.

Social Media in CLF 2.0

I'm speaking today to a Social Media Public Sector Workshop for the Government of Canada. It's an interesting topic, because while government clients are desperate to harness the power of social media for their social marketing, they are constrained by a number of rules and regulations.

One of the biggest is the Official Languages Act. According to some of my government clients, everything put online by the government — including user comments — must be translated so that it appears in both English and French. As you can imagine, this makes real-time online community building almost impossible (unless they employ a legion of simultaneous translators, as in the U.N.!)

Another huge challenge is privacy. The Government of Canada has rules about setting cookies, or take other information from users, except in very specific cases. And Google Analytics, which sends private information to the States, is also problematic — limiting measurement.

As well, there are accessibility standards, and a major concern about trolling. How can they possibly get anywhere near a social network? They're also gun shy, because of the responses to CRA's "underground economy" video contest on YouTube.

We were able to make some great headway in collaboration with Public Safety Canada on their 72 Hours emergency preparedness campaign. In short, we avoided the pitfalls of trying to engage people conversationally on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Instead, together we found and engaged interested bloggers and organizations directly, recruiting them to champion the cause and campaign on a secondary level.

As well, we worked with Lee Lefever to develop a Common Craft video on the subject, developing copy in English and French to meet language standards. Lee then shared the video through his own networks, and it showed up on YouTube, giving us even more reach:

We also developed a quiz on MSN about emergency preparedness that drove 47,826 people to getprepared.gc.ca, and created badges for partner sites. Future plans include a podcast strategy.

So my message to government today will be: don't be scared of social media. Just be careful, creative and resourceful.

We've got issues

I just read a headline that made me smile: "Boom in Issues Advertising Could Net Agencies $1 Billion".

Okay, they're talking about the United States with its shiny new government, but it's still nice to have our corner of the market validated. (Coincidentally, I'm actually doing some American social issues work right now, but more about that in a later blog.)

Here in the Great White North, the recession is also driving spending in social marketing. A new Economic Action Plan needs to be explained to the public, and other government priorities like security, health and the environment continue to require outreach. The government has to advertise, no matter what the economic climate.

This is a smart time to be in Social Issues Marketing. We're busy here on a number of government, association, and corporate social responsibility campaigns that will roll out over the next few months.

But it sounds like the U.S. issues advertising boom is not quite like the Canadian one:

"With the ad business the way it is right now and a big pile of money sitting out in the world of politics, there's no doubt traditional agencies will try to jump in," said Vinny Minchillo, chief creative officer of Scott Howell & Co. ... They will fail ... It's not uncommon for political clients to have television production budgets of under $15,000 per spot and a need to be on the air in 48 hours ... The hard-core retail shops probably have the best chance of being able to adapt quickly. Also the shops with employees who don't care much about sleeping."

Yikes! And here I was thinking that work-life balance was one of the most important issues of all...

Of course, the American article is talking about the hardcore world of Washington lobbyists. I see advocacy ads in The Hill Times and on bus shelters in front of Parliament Hill every day (we've even been responsible for some of them), but for the most part our clients are asking us to execute timely campaigns based on long-term communications strategies. We've done our share of crisis communications, but nothing like the dog-eat-dog scenario painted by Mr. Minchillo.

But then again, Minchillo continues to refer to Issues Advertising as "political". Up here, "political" advertising is kind of a hot potato.

I'll stick with communicating Canada's issues with appropriate niceness.

We've got LeFever...

...and the only cure is Preparing a Family Emergency Kit in Plain English (click link if video cuts off):



As Emergency Preparedness Week continues, I'm going to blog about how we've been involved in the social marketing around safety and security.

As part of our 72 Hours emergency preparedness campaign for Public Safety Canada, we had the pleasure of working with Lee LeFever to create the Government of Canada's first bilingual Common Craft instructional video.

For those unfamiliar with Lee's work, he and his wife Sachi create videos with paper cutouts and "plain English" voiceovers that explain just about everything in the simplest way possible. They're a Copywriter's dream. One of the most popular videos, "Twitter in Plain English" has been viewed almost a million times and was featured on CNN Money.

Our involvement on the Family Emergency Kit video was to provide input on the English script (mostly to keep in on-brand and within government messaging standards), adapt the script into French (always a challenge because French tends to be longer) and produce the French version in Montréal. I ended up Tweeting the production, and Lee was cool enough to respond.

This project was great new territory for government advertising, as they haven't had a great deal of success going viral in the past. By attaching themselves to a known commodity with a true public service message (and as part of an overall campaign), they've made progress reaching people in the new Internet.