Ah... the feeling of sweet relief. Can you believe it's already been eight weeks on this the second journey of my strategic communications blog?
Eight weeks.
I'm not sure that eight weeks have ever seemed so long and so short at the same time. This will be my last posting for a while (or maybe indefinitely). Who knows, I may get a wild hair and find something that I just have to share with the world.
This term has brought a lot of changes to my life and my education. I no longer feel lost in the field of strategic communication. I'm starting to feel like I really belong and I know this is where I'm meant to be. My personal life has been a whirlwind of moving, deployment, my 3 rowdy children, and my pregnancy with our 4th boy (again, all boys.. what are the odds?!). I'm happy to announce that my world will be returning to normal very soon and we're all anxiously awaiting the return of my husband from his deployment and our return back to our Florida home.
For now, I will relish in this week long spring break at my in-laws house letting my children be spoiled rotten and enjoying a momentary break from this graduate school journey (who am I kidding, I'm already thumbing through the book for my next course... Hi, Dr. Sarapin!). The kids will enjoy the break at least!
I hope you all have a wonderful and enjoyable spring break 2014!-Rachel
The goal of every strategic communication professional is to
launch a campaign that is both initially successful and has long term success. Campaigns
can vary widely depending on the type of business or organization you’re being
employed by. Your goal may be sales or your goal may be to improve the opinions
of the organization, to garner donations for a non-profit, to get views on a
photo or video, or any other one of the infinite possibilities of strategic communication
campaigns. Not everything in strategic communication can be easily measured
with numbers, which sometimes begs the difficult question: How am I doing? Is
my campaign successful?
In 2013 the organization Water is Life launched a campaign
playing off the popular hashtag #firstworldproblems. In the campaign a series
of videos showed inhabitants of third world countries reading out real life
Twitter and Facebook statuses that used the hashtag #firstworldproblems in
front of components of their own life. The campaign was designed to bring
awareness to the clean water issue in third world countries and the impact that
having clean water could have on those affected. At the end of the video, the
hashtag #firstworldproblems appears with a subtitle of “are not problems”.
In the United States campaigns such as this can be
particularly difficult to spread with true purpose and garner the kind of
impact desired. How successful was the campaign? How can we tell? First, the
buzz around the campaign was phenomenal. All of a sudden #firstworldproblems
changed from somewhat of a joke about trivial complaints in the lives of
Americans to something more. The hashtag #firstworld problems was being used
more to spread awareness about clean drinking water and its importance in third
world countries and less to describe insignificant gripes. That alone was a
measure of success in a qualitative way. Even greater was the quantitative
success of the campaign. The First World Problems campaign was so widespread
that it garnered more than one million days’ worth of clean drinking water
through donations. ONE MILLION! Of course, that won’t last as long as it
sounds, being that each day is for one individual. But wow, what a campaign.
Water is Life got their message out, created social media buzz, and ultimately
raised an enormous amount of donations for their organization.
Another of 2013’s most successful campaigns was a little lighter
on the topic and much more hilarious. Kmart launched a campaign to promote the
ability to have items shipped that aren’t available or are out of stock in
Kmart retail stores. The campaign called “Ship My Pants” was a bold play on
words that very much risked turning people away with its implication of
profanity. Instead, the ad went viral.
A lot of people appreciated the risks taken by DraftFCB, the
marketing agency behind the viral Kmart campaign. The campaign was catchy and
was shared over and over again and spread through social media like wildfire.
So the campaign was popular, but how successful was it? In this instance the
success can easily be measured by numbers. The original ad (there was a holiday
themed follow up in mid-December that also reached viral status) has currently
garnered over twenty million views on YouTube. I can’t count how many times I
saw it pop up on my Facebook feed.It
took over Twitter as well. But was it successful? Yes. The goal of the campaign
was to make sure customers were aware that there are other options for shoppers
who can’t come to the stores or who can’t find what they need in stores. Twenty
million plus people are now very aware that with Kmart you can “ship your pants”.
In some ways the ad campaign also had impact that could be measured in a
qualitative sense in that the campaign brought a breath of fresh air to a very
old brand that has been declining in revenue and reputation for years. As for
how far the ad will go to change the face of Kmart, only time will tell, but it
was most certainly successful at spreading the message of ship to home
merchandise.
No matter what your campaign is as a strategic communication
professional the task of measuring your success can be daunting. It’s best to
employ many different strategies of evaluation and come in at all angles. What
means success for one campaign could mean utter failure for another. Lay out
your goals in black and white and go back to them as the campaign progresses to
see if you’re still on track with your original goals.
