At Snook we’re currently shaping an alcohol awareness campaign for 16-26 year olds in Glasgow Whose Round. The project is in collaboration with Young Scot and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Our aim is not to demonise alcohol but to create an awareness campaign that truly speaks to young people, makes them understand why they should be safer and more responsible and helps improving Glaswegian drinking culture. We’re focusing on making the campaign reach on and offline and are currently in the process of designing a marketing campaign that introduces services across the night out that helps keep people safe as well as build an awareness message around alcohol.
I asked Robin from Snook to give the low down on what the team have been up to:
To ensure that our message and online presence are relevant to young people we dedicated the first part of WhoseRound project to research, focus groups, workshops and activities focused on improving our understanding of young people’s relationship with alcohol, social media and various communication channels that might be integrated in the campaign.
Working on the second part of WhoseRound project made us dive into social media, explore what an online community manager does, understand and research internet fads, trends and challenges trying to unlock what makes a message, image or meme go viral.
The first thing we needed to create was a recognisable Brand.
No one would have listened or shared our content unless they saw our link on a friend’s Facebook page, WhoseRound page had to have at least a few hundreds likes, people had to start talking about it. We had to show that others had interacted with our brand, we needed faces, photos and names.
We invited young people from Glasgow to participate in focus groups and prototyping sessions where we presented our ideas for WhoseRound campaign and gathered their feedback as well as new ideas for the project. Connecting with young people, having them interacting with our Facebook page, sharing and linking our content is vital for WhoseRound project and their direct input on ideas on how to promote and develop the campaign is extremely valuable.
To reward them for their ideas and talent, as part of WhoseRound project, we have set up a competition as that will be running until the end of October 2014. Participants are invited to submit ideas around the relationship between young people and alcohol in Greater Glasgow and Clyde for a chance to win £1000.
To engage with a wider range of young people in Glasgow, especially non student we have also launched another initiative, “Dear Alcohol stories”. Young people can submit their stories on our website (http://whoseroundglasgow.com/dear-alcohol-stories/) or via Young Scot Rewards. They can choose to say their name or remain anonymous. The material gathered from June 2014 until the end of the year will be featured in a small online/offline publication. Some of the stories might become scripts for short films, that will in eventually be made into films by young people.
To keep the buzz going around the project we need an ongoing effort to make WhoseRound brand known by young in the city. For this reason we started the Facebook mini competitions and since mid August we have been going out every other Friday night with golden cones and WhoseRound branded props, asking young Glaswegians on a night out to take photos, like our Facebook page, tag themselves and spread the message for a chance to win £50.
Our next goal is bringing WhoseRound to a range of Glasgow Universities’ freshers events to engage with a wider number of people, promote the competition, collect “Dear Alcohol stories” and consolidate our social media presence. We have secured a space freshers fairs in Glasgow and organised idea generation workshop as well as a WhoseRound Pub Quiz, designed to test people’s knowledge of alcohol and spread awareness messages in a fun way. We have got flyers, posters and activities ready to go as well as a few surprises up our sleeves!