Overview

In 2007  the Family Violence Prevention Fund partnered with the Ad Council and R/GA to create a campaign to prevent teen dating violence both now and as teens mature and enter adulthood.  Our initial research found that teen dating had gone digital and teen dating abuse online had followed. This emerging area became our focus.

Research was conducted at key points of the year-long development process. Because we wanted to understand how teens interact with each other in a digital environment, we created that environment and then brought respondents in to interact with it.  At every point in the research process, respondents created artifacts—words, pictures and ideas—that did not just inform the subsequent campaign, but literally became part of the campaign.

In early 2009, the ThatsNotCool.com site and multimedia campaign was launched to draw teens’ attention to the issue of digital dating violence and to help them “draw their digital line” by deciding for themselves what’s right or wrong rather than be lectured by adults.

The campaign included banners, social media, TV, print, radio, outdoors and a mobile site. At the ThatsNotCool.com website teens could view content, as well as create and share videos, call out cards and more. The campaign helped start a conversation in the media on teen dating abuse and in the first few months led to over 300,000 visitors, 200,000 video views and 28,000 call out cards sent.

Please take a look at this short video to learn more about the challenge, the research, development of the campaign and to see the creative in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY4BhzuOeSQ

 

Research Phase I (2007 – 2008)

First we reviewed existing academic and secondary research. Next we needed qualitative research to get a deeper, more nuanced and current understanding of the situation – including teens’ social norms, and vernacular. And we needed nationwide input on a tight timeline.

Abby Leafe head of New Leafe Research partnered with Judith Oppenheim, research director at RGA, and the team in developing innovative research methodologies to meet budget, timing and diversity constraints; leverage new digital research opportunities; and create an environment where teens would be comfortable participating and being open. Ben Smithee head of The Smithee Group conducted the male friendship groups.

• Online Immersion: This phase explored the language, attitudes and behaviors of teens regarding dating. For a week, they recorded their lives and experiences in words and photos on their own ‘blog’ created for this research.  This included structured activities and open-ended forums.

Figure 1:  Teen blogging interface

 

• In-home friendship circles (14 in 3 cities): The next phase built upon these learnings using friendship circle discussions conducted in the home of a host teen who recruited same sex friends.  The first step was getting the host parent’s permission. We included structured discussion and  loosely directed conversation about their dating life and language.

Figure 2: Portion of Language Dictionary which emerged from early qualitative

 

Next we held creative development work sessions with creative teams and teens.

• Creative development workshops:  We had 5 same-sex friendship groups of 3-6 teens per group. It was important to ensure authenticity and excitement in the campaign experience, language, and look and feel. We had a mixture of exercises such as word sorts, word mapping, and sketching, as well as exposure to work-in-progress concept stimuli.

With the input from the creativity workshops, R/GA developed a revised set of concepts for exploration with a new set of teens.

• Concept evaluation groups: Friendship circles evaluated the creative overall as well as specific components.
  • Concept review: Feedback on campaign elements, including mobile, out-of-home, print, TV, radio, and web site.
  • Creation stations: The concept for the campaign web site included a host of interactive tools, including a fairly robust video creation application, an interactive quiz and an ‘i-card’ creator. The room was set up as a ‘laboratory’ with two distinct “creation stations” where respondents were asked to try the tools, and specifically to create their own video in responses to the creative elements they previewed during the focus group.  Respondents were provided with a host of everyday props to use to create their videos, including, dolls, toys, puppets and so on.

Figure 3:  Content created by respondents with group stimuli

 

Phase 2 (2009) 

A second phase of research was conducted to provide guidance on how to strengthen individual campaign elements or to add additional components.

• The first stage used  in-home friendship focus groups to explore the current campaign
  • In addition to a general discussion about their lives, friendships and romantic interests more structured activities included sorting photographs of celebrity couples into the categories of ‘the good,’ ‘the bad,’ and ‘the ugly.’  Lastly, each group was given the opportunity to visit ThatsNotCool.com to give their impressions of the site in general.

Figure 4:  ThatsNotCool.com

• The second stage included an online video diary, a texting journal and a survey of respondents’ social networking pages.
  •  Daily written and video based activities covering role playing, tech usage demonstrations, problem/solution creation
  • Texting the moderator each time they were engaged in a digital communication with a romantic interest
  • Documenting each time they saw, read or heard something that fit the theme of “digital grey areas’
  • Texting a “status update” at regular intervals (e.g.hourly) to help paint a picture of “a day in the life” of today’s teens

Figure 5: Prioritization of digital infractions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shift from a cash-carrying to cash-less society in the UK has been incredibly rapid, with the effects of the shift to contactless increasing in the past year – there are now over 100 million contactless cards in issue in the UK and over 350 million contactless transactions were made in December 2016 alone. Although this shift to using digital transactions has been lauded by many as proof of new technological advances making our lives easier, it has also created challenges and barriers to charitable giving that charities and brands must tackle together to overcome.

For many of us who don’t carry cash – or at least not in the same way we did 10 years ago – we are unable to donate our spare change to those in need as we used to do. In the Netherlands an ad agency recently released a new solution to this growing tension; a jacket, to be worn by homeless people that not only keeps them warm but also allows passers-by to donate €1 by tapping the contactless payment area. The money that is donated can then be redeemed in shelters for food, a bed and a bath, and those who donate can be sure that their donations are being used as they would wish.

This isn’t the first foray by charities to try and encourage us to donate using our contactless cards – Cancer Research UK have trialled contactless donation terminals in central locations, and the Blue Cross attached contactless donation points to dogs to create the world’s first canine fundraisers – ‘Tap Dogs’. The move to cash-free is forcing charities to rapidly innovate, but this can be incredibly beneficial to their fundraising. The children’s charity NSPCC said that their recent trial using contactless donations set at a fixed amount of £2 actually increased their average donations, because people are less likely to donate small coin denominations.

Part of the reason why contactless donations have captured people’s imaginations is due to the new kinds of interaction that they provide. Contactless technology is often criticised for diminishing human social interaction, but some charities have creatively flipped this expectation on its head. The Blue Cross have used dogs to create a human-canine interaction, but Cancer Research UK have also used contactless technology to trial new interactive window displays. When a contactless donation was given, the shop windows displayed a video showing the difference that can be made by the money given. Not only does this innovation close the gap between giving to charitable causes and seeing the effects of that donation, it is also available 24/7, and utilises the physical space on the high street that the charity already has at their disposal.

Contactless donations have also taken off because they tap into our need for everything to be on demand and instantaneous. Talking to someone in the street, filling out endless clipboard forms and having to stay involved and engaged through endless emails and letters doesn’t fit with our new, fast-paced, more demanding mode of living. By using contactless donations, charities can combat this problem of a more time-poor, less patient society, by giving supporters more autonomy over their donation.

At Kantar Added Value we believe that brands should play a vital role in shifting and shaping changes in culture. We’d love to see charities partnering with other brands in this area to fully explore all innovation opportunities; people want to donate money to worthy causes, but they now expect this to fit in around their lives with as little effort and fuss as possible. Mastercard have already voiced their concerns about the growing gap between those who have access to bank accounts, and those who are cut off from the rest of society and denied opportunities because of their dependence on cash. Mastercard and other financial services brands could work to resolve this issue by backing a charity contactless campaign, such as the jacket for homeless people, to provide more credibility and confidence for those who decide to donate on the street. Alternatively supermarkets could encourage in-store charity donations by offering to round up transaction amounts, from say £6.59 to £7.00, with the extra money going straight to the customer’s charity of choice, to provide a seamless donation experience.

Although the evolving digital economy offers solutions and possibilities for many, we must be careful as a society to ensure that those without access to it are not excluded entirely – and brands should play a vital part in helping to bridge this gap. Charities also need to ensure that they are not left behind by changing societal behaviours, and that they continue to innovate and explore new modes of charitable giving.

In Brief…

We wanted to examine how technology is changing and how people use it to interact with culture. We worked with the Cultural Strategy team at Kantar Added Value and utilized cultural scoping and trends research to explore how things manifest and change in culture.

 For this work we used qualitative trends research, and looked at the actions of brands in the charity and financial sector to draw strong conclusions about the changing nature of charitable giving. For this piece of work we looked specifically at technology and how the most emergent and switched on charities were using this to their advantage.

We now have a greater understanding of how new digital technology is shifting cultural and societal behaviors, and have developed a strong call to arms for brands to become involved in the charity sector. This research has shown how the third sector can stay abreast of but also drive cultural change, and how they can work collaboratively with brands. The research encourages charities not to see these cultural shifts as problems but opportunities to stay relevant and a part of peoples lives.

 

Hannah Robbins – The Cultural Practice at Kantar Added Value

Imagine if you could ask people across the whole world what they really think, and imagine that they were to answer with brutal honesty and complete anonymity, about an issue that is a criminal offense in huge swaths of the world and is highly divisive and politically charged.

In 2016, RIWI, a global survey technology and data firm, partnered with ILGA (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) to conduct the largest global study on attitudes towards LGBTI people. Over 96,000 respondents provided their real opinions on LGBTI people, marriage equality, gender and sexuality expression, and human rights.

This breakthrough collaborative study was particularly special since by using RIWI’s Random Domain Internet Technology (RDIT™) the project team was able to conduct the survey in 65 countries, including in many which criminalize same-sex activity with imprisonment, stoning or even death. Critically, citizens were able to provide their responses voluntarily, anonymously and securely. A study of this magnitude, on this topic or on other sensitive social and related policy issues, would not be possible using traditional research methods where in-person participants are usually very unwilling to come forward due to fear of persecution and ostracism.

Initial findings from the Global Attitudes Survey show that sentiment toward the LGBTI community has emerged as more favourable over the past five years across the world, but the findings reinforce that acceptance is far from a reality in dozens of countries around the world. Some interesting findings include:

• 34% of respondents say that their opinion on LGBTI people has become more favourable in the last 5 years. 67% of respondents think that human rights should be applied to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. 43% of respondents from the African continent believe that being a sexual minority, transgender or intersex person should be illegal.

• 68% of respondents answered that they would be very or somewhat upset if their child said they were in love with someone of same gender (when gender is defined in the legacy binary sense of only ‘man’ and ‘woman’).

• 36% of respondents in Asia, 34% in Latin America, and 21% in the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe support marriage equality.

• 41% of respondents from the Middle East and North Africa agree that companies should be allowed to fire LGBTI employees on the grounds of their sexuality or gender expression.

While the findings demonstrate that attitudes toward the LGBTI community are slowly becoming more favourable, the study also reveals that acceptance and equal rights are far from a reality in numerous countries around the world.

The data collected by RIWI and ILGA are proving to be vital in developing tools for advocacy, planning and funding of sexual orientation and gender identity movements, and are helping move LGBTI discussions away from the ‘anecdotal’ to the ‘actual’, through facilitating actions based on credible global evidence.

Attitudes toward the LGBTI community is just one of many issues where the global NGO and development communities are increasingly looking toward tapping into innovations in global citizen data and new insight generation in order to support data-driven and evidence-based policy making, measurement and evaluation, and citizen engagement initiatives.

Global social research is clearly one area where the global market research and Big Data industries are situated to not only ‘do well’, but also ‘do good’.

By Eric Meerkamper, Global Head, Citizen Engagement, RIWI Corp.

RIWI (www.riwi.com) is a global survey technology and sentiment measurement firm that captures opinion in any country and region in the world using its patented Random Domain Intercept Technology™ (RDIT).