Media Campaign Analysis

Media Strategy for the 'Mental Wealth' awareness video

To kick-start our  project, we needed to devise a plan for information, creation and distribution of both our video and it's representation on social media. The subject matter is sensitive, and therefore has to approached in a respectful manner. We of course don't qualify as trained in this respect, so our first course of action was to gather information on suicide and related issues. I offered to get in touch with mental health organisations, in the hopes of speaking to a representative that could give me relevant information pertaining to our cause. The rest of the group (Ellie, Ben, Adam and Anthony) took on their own individual information hunt ranging from the causes of suicide to the statistics surrounding mental health illnesses and the sufferers.

I managed to get in touch with a representative of Stem4, a mental health organisation located within London. During our exchange over the phone I managed to gather important information related to our project (all can be found within my 'Mental Health' blog). I then relayed this information back to group once back in college, comparing notes and discussing what we'd managed to gather.

The next step as a group was to create platforms in which the general public could be made aware of our project, and be kept up to date and it's progress. We split this duty between myself and Anthony, whilst the others carried on with individual pursuits such as print media and script writing for the video. I handled the Instagram page, whilst Anthony handled Twitter, we both then took responsibility for Facebook. I would continue to update this social media throughout the filming and editing process. Ellie brought in her aunt, who works as a nurse, and had the ability to give us information on mental illnesses and first hand accounts of it's affects on young people. We then brought in Jess Eddy, a former student who has had past difficulties with depression. We wanted a first hand account from a young person because not only was it insightful, it also added authenticity to our project, after all is it about mental illness and it's affects on the younger generation, see Jess' inclusion seemed only fitting. We interviewed both Ellie's aunt and Jess for our documentary, we used the information we had gathered to make sure that our questions and expectations were respectful.

We needed our social media presence to have consistency, if were promoting a campaign, we need the campaign to be recognisable, this involves using the same logos, titles and hash tags (where applicable). I took charge of Instagram, updating it with relevant information on the filming and editing process, which allows people to understand the sole purpose of our campaign which is to create a documentary on the mental health, in the hopes of propelling an idea, an idea that tells us it's okay to talk about sensitive issues, and it's okay to ask for help. The reason I wanted to handle Instagram specifically is because I know it's user base is mostly teenagers and young adults - people highly susceptible to the negative effects of mental illness. Instagram is the perfect tool to access these demographics, by having the team follow and share the account, we managed to get a few college students aware of our work.