Task 3: Success stories

Learning outcome 1 (U24): Understand the products that are produced within and across media industries 

D1 (U24) Discuss how successful media concepts have been positively exploited across multiple media industries

Concept - NHS Smoke free campaign

  A concept is an idea, plan or intention. NHS took what was just a concept and turned it into a huge multi media campaign with the aim to stop as many people as possible from smoking. Here i will speak about the consistency of the message they are trying to share, how clear the message is and what may or may not make this an effective concept. NHS used several media platforms and several pieces of content in order to reach out to as many crowds as possible, this is due to the fact that this was a message that had no age restriction or limit.

The first misleading thing that NHS has done, is have way too many websites involving smoking which make it hard to know where to really turn to if you are trying to quite or if your looking for inspiration in order to want to quit. When you search ‘stop smoking NHS’ online the first link you will be directed to is the NHS stop smoking site, however this is a different site to the smoke free campaign that people are actually being directed to. This can be misleading because people will be unsure about which website to turn to and which one is the reliable one.

The smoke free NHS campaign was begun around 2006, and is constantly developed and brining out new content to make smokers want to quit till this day. There are around 8 million smokers in England, and two thirds of that amount report that they would like to quit. The first tool that the NHS used to make smokers want to quit, or at least direct them to where they need to go if they do decide to quit are videos. You can tell by the quality of their videos and the special effects used in it that this is a matter that is important to them and that they really want people to come to realise what smoking is doing to their bodies. NHS made its own smoke free youtube account, that currently has racked up a total of  4,386,002  views on their videos. The youtube account has a total of 96 uploaded, with a variety of videos going from their own video advertisements all the way to interviews of current smokers who want to quit, to past smokers success stories and even videos that focus on how smoking harms specific parts of your body. The some very graphic and gruesome videos, can be seen to be directed at different audiences. For example the video that is shown bellow, is specifically directed at mothers or parents in general, the video shows a recording of a young child discussing his mother and how he would like her to quit so he doesn't have to lose her. This is a video that would most definitely speak some sense into some parents, the video could open their eyes to something that maybe their children are too afraid to stand up for. Theres even a video that speaks about the harm that parents smoking has on their children, basically saying if your not going to do it for yourself, do it for your children's health.

  

                             

They even offer videos of real life success stories of people who managed to quit using the support of the NHS and the smoke free campaign. This can give inspiration for anyone who believes that its too hard to do, it gives them a glimpse of the future, a smoke free future. You can definitely say that NHS used videos to their full potential and knew exactly what they where doing. They managed to successfully target several target audiences with different demographics by exploiting the effects it has on them and on others, even if that means showing graphic images of organs. Through the success stories and comments on the youtube videos we can see that this media form was successful in its aims. There was nothing misleading about the videos and the key  message was delivered clearly and as efficiently as possible.

However there is a limit to how effective youtube videos can be, not everyone can afford a device to enjoy youtube videos on all day and not everyone has the time to sit around watching videos. Therefore NHS needed to come up with a more simple way of getting these images to smokers and what better way is there to do so than traditional marketings straggles such as posters. NHS created a huge variety of smoke free posters, some of them as gruesome as the videos that they created. Same as with the youtube videos, NHS used the posters to target as many groups of people as possible and made posters specifically for these groups so people can directly link to problems spoken of in these posters. One poster that they created was directly aimed at families of smokers. It was filled with bright colours and showed a beautiful blue sky with freshly cut green grass, this was to sugar coat the real message that was to come which stated all the effects that second hand smoking can have on children that don't even smoke, these effects include death, asthma, chest infections and more. This poster can either be effective or misleading, because it wouldn't catch peoples attention for the right reasons, none would look at that poster and at first glance think that it has to do with smoking which ruins the point of the poster because it makes it less likely that smokers will pay attention to it. However it can also have the opposite effect by making smokers think that it is just an ordinary poster however once they get to read it they are presented with what their smoking is doing to their harmless children.   

They also crated posters which where directly aimed at pregnant women, such as this poster that you can see bellow. This poster may help with visualise what their really doing to the baby inside them. It basically says that with every cigarette that they smoke the baby smokes along. NHS created an endless amount of posters related to smoking and children as they felt that they need to be spoken up for, clearly young children would not confront their parents about their smoking habits therefore NHS took maters into their own hands. Of course they also put together some posters which where more general and that could relate to every person. They delivered the key message clearly and effectively using these detailed posters,which where carefully tailored to specific groups who can relate to the situations spoken of on these posters. They also successfully managed to direct the audience to the smoke free website or contact details on each poster so the audience is inspired to do something about their addiction as soon as they see the poster. When looking at several posters beside each other it can be seen that they knew what they where doing. They know that no one wants to see a huge poster with gruesome organs all over it, instead they used colourful backgrounds and children’s drawings to make these posters seem as joyful as possible, also sending out ehe message that there are other joys in life rather than smoking.

                   

Of course they also took advantage of the biggest advertising platform out there at the current time, social media. It is undeniable that most people in England are involved in some sort of social media platform, so what better way is there to get the audience to see all the content at once than creating a page where all of that content can be uploaded to. There currently is an active twitter smoke free page as well as a Facebook page, this is a shame because other platforms such as instagram also have a great potential to gain thousands of followers however twitter and Facebook still did a great deal. Their twitter page has 7,334 followers and around two thousand posts and still counting. Having a twitter page is extremely useful because it helps NHS target all groups of audience at once, it gives the audience one place to find all the content directed at all people and specific people. The only thing that they could improve to maximise the potential of their twitter page is to link their website page somewhere as well as give contact options as they do on their page. Their Facebook page however is much more successful than their twitter page. The Facebook page has around 228 thousand followers. The face page has all the same content as the twitter page and is directed at the same audience, a great feature that Facebook allows is to share the page with friends which will allow to spread awareness of the page as quickly as possible. The beauty of these social media platforms is that it builds some sort of community. People can get on there and speak to other smokers facing the same struggles and they can inspire each other to quite, as well as this the audience themselves can share the content of the page to raise awareness even for people who don't smoke. The social media platforms are a great and efficient way of raising awareness and a very unlikely form of media for people to get confused over because everything is there in place.

NHS even created their own apple application with features that will help smokers quit. Features of the app include 

• Daily support message to help motivate 
• Badges to reward progress
• A savings calculator so you can see how much your saving on cigarettes 
• Record a motivation. This lets you take a picture or add text to  remind you why your quitting.
• Success tips - tried and tested ways to help.

These features in an app can help a quitting smoker carry on their hard adventure day by day, the app is there to make sure that they don't give up after a day. It shows the smokers everything positive about them quitting such as how much money they've saved on cigarets and how their heart rate is improving. It helps show them there are more positives to not smoking than negatives and that it is not necessary.

Another option that NHS offers that isn't usually incorporated in campaigns is the option to get in contact with a member of their team. The image shown bellow is one of the first things you can see on their smoke free page as well as the cover image of their Facebook page. Several options are given, you can either contact them via email, text, Facebook messenger and you can even meet up with someone in person. This shows the smokers that NHS cares about them and that they should care as well, it also helps them take the first step if their unsure how or scared to do so on their own. 

Brand - Coca Cola 

Coca Cola is the global drink brand that is known for their fizzy drinks and incredibly creative campaigns. Coca Cola has put together some of the most successful campaigns out there such as the Share a Coke campaign. With such a huge target audience that Coca Cola is faced with, it is important for them to know this target audience as well as possible in order to know how to reach this audience in the most efficient way. Coca Cola is so successful due to how well they promote themselves. Their Share a Coke campaign was truly a lesson to learn from for other companies, the way they used different forms of media to reach different groups of the audience was extremely effective and turned them into a global brand on a whole new level.

Due to Coca Cola being a global brand, and there not being any sort of age limit for their product, their target audience is pretty much anyone who can afford the product. Coca Cola would need to come up with promotional material directed at all people however they can also make adverts directed at specific groups of people to make it more likely for them to go and purchase the product.  Coca Colas video advertisements can be see everywhere, in their video they try and include people from all different sexes and ethnicities to show that Coca Cola is a product that is for everyone and that brings people from all places together. They make sure to include this in every advert to make sure that its just a one off advert which misleads the audience. Do Coca Colas global success, they create adverts suitable for every country their popular in. All of these can be found on demand through Coca Colas youtube page, which gives the option to watch Coca Cola adverts from the Philippines, India, Uganda, Germany and many more. This makes sure that there is no confusion in any area over the advert, because the advert is adapted to wherever its being broadcasted.   

Coca Cola has also been popular for their posters since the very beginning of their existence as you can see to the right. However back then when Coca Cola first started, their posters where extremely misleading and posters as such would not be aloud by the ASA anymore. The poster claimed that the fizzy drink could be used a medicine for depression headaches, which we all know by now that is not true. These days Coca Cola focus on the more positive things, that is the product and how great it is. We can also see from the poster bellow that they not only create video content specially for each country, but they also do this for posters. This helps the audience feel a real connection to the brand, which is one of Coca Colas main goals. 

Lastly we get to one of Coca Colas most powerful tools of marketing, social media. Social media was a big part of their share a coke campaign and it still is one of the most important elements in their marketing strategy. Coca Cola is such a well known brand that they have made themselves accessible on every social media platform available, including Facebook, instagram, twitter and more.  Coca Cola have an astonishing 107 Million followers on Facebook alone. The Facebook page is constantly active, and updated followers on every new detail about Coca Cola. The page allows audience o interact with the brand, as well as share the posts with their friends and family, searching for Coca Cola on Facebook can be misleading because people can end up on a fake page therefore it is important to search things such as the blue tick next to the name to make sure that it is the verified account. On the other hand, Coca Colas instagram account has around 2.4 million followers. On there they mostly share videos of people enjoying their products, the audience can face the same problem of mistaking the account for another one when searching for them on instagram too, they can tell the difference the same way as you would on Facebook, by searching for the varied blue tick.