The NSPCC as Integrated Marketer - Centre for … NSPCC as Integrated Marketer John Grounds, Director of Communications, NSPCC March 2004 Transcript of talk given at the Centre for

The NSPCC as Integrated Marketer

John Grounds, Director of Communications, NSPCC March 2004 Transcript of talk given at the Centre for Integrated Marketing Conference in March 2004 celebrating the award of Integrated Marketer of the Year.

I’m going to talk today about how the NSPCC’s FULL STOP campaign and

appeal have evolved from an original unifying idea into the driver of media

neutral planning at the NSPCC. I’ll also try to describe how we have

addressed the issues raised by integrated communications over the past

five years.

The NSPCC’s marketing and communication had a history of piecemeal

activity throughout the 80s and early 90s but we believe we have now

become an organisation with an integrated, open planning strategy that is

planning 18 months ahead.

Media neutral planning and integrated marketing is something that the

marketing and communications departments of charities are having to

© Centre for Integrated Marketing and NSPCC, 2004 Page 1

understand – we are having to behave and think like sophisticated FMCG or

retail marketing departments. And, to a point, some charities are a step

ahead. Primarily this is because they have always understood that their

audiences tend to be much more diverse and require quite different

approaches depending on what response you want from them.

FULL STOP was launched in 1999 following the establishment of a new

organisational strategy. That launch was the peak – up to that point – of

marketing and communications integration.

The FULL STOP campaign was created out of a need to unite the public

AND the NSPCC behind a new shared vision. For many years the NSPCC

had operated on a piecemeal strategy of highly creative, impactful

communications but with no genuine endgame for either themselves or the

audience. This meant that communications were often seen as being an

add on rather than a core part of the NSPCC’s role in society.


Print work such as this…

…was used to raise awareness of an issue, possibly generate donations

but ultimately they would disappear from the public conscience as soon as

it disappeared from the pages of the newspapers.

A decision was made in 1998 that because the NSPCC had numerous

audiences – public, parents, teachers, child care professionals,


Government, children and their own staff – we needed a platform that could

unite them all behind what the NSPCC were there to do, what their mission

was – essentially why they existed. This meant that even if you were an MP

or a child in need of help you knew what the NSPCC were there to do and

you shared and bought into the same vision. At this time the concept of

integration, let alone media neutral or open planning was still in its infancy

but this single minded approach to communications was a pre-cursor to

establishing a more sophisticated integrated approach.

Research at the time showed that creating this platform meant enrolling

the public in a message that made them realise what the end-game was

and that everyone had a part to play – this was expressed as ‘Together the

public and the NSPCC can end cruelty to children’. This became ‘Together

we can end cruelty to children. FULL STOP’ and thus the FULL STOP

campaign was born.


One question often asked of the NSPCC is do we think it was too big a

mission, too fantastical? No, not at all. What would be enough – 50%? If our

mission wasn’t the ending of cruelty then why should the public, parents or

children believe in us? It gave the whole organisation a focus, purpose and

motivation. It also gave the parents, children and the public something to

believe in and be motivated by. It was able to link both in the minds of the

NSPCC staff and the public such diverse elements as the lobbying activity

of our policy department to the fundraising message of our corporate

fundraising team. In short, it became an organsing thought – a unifying

idea.

The primary objective of the new FULL STOP message was to raise

awareness of child abuse and getting people to face up to the reality of its

existence. The Launch campaign aimed to grab the public by the lapels and

shake them out of their ignorance and resistance to the problem of child

cruelty.

The BIG IDEA was to use the power of the public’s imagination to

communicate how we can’t look away from child abuse any more.


You can see some of the print work here and this is the powerful launch TV

ad.

A shot from ‘Cant’ look’ TV ad:


This Launch activity also included a national door drop campaign and on-

street activity which urged the public to sign up to the NSPCC pledge to

support the FULL STOP campaign. All these elements shared the thought

that we can’t look away any more. It is a good example of how we have

approached integration throughout the FULL STOP campaign – we look at

the specific objective of the communication and the required response of

the audience and then create communications that can deliver against that

and not simply to put the same visuals or copy across all media. Our

audiences, as we noted earlier, are so disparate that, for example, if we are

running a positive discipline campaign, we can’t talk to a group of parents

and a group of child care professionals in the same language. The

responses we are trying to invoke are quite different – even if the end

result, stopping cruelty to children, is the same.Following the launch

awareness campaign there now needed to be communications that

brought the NSPCC and the public together. Research showed that the

public, although recognising that abuse was an issue, would still rather not

have to deal with it themselves. The NSPCC needed to show that they

weren’t simply standing in a big tower dispensing their thoughts on how

society should change. They needed to create a bond between the public

and themselves so that they could become a trusted source of information

and advice. The Babies Campaign of 2000 aimed to do this with a series of


communications that showed that the NSPCC understood the difficulties of

parenting and were a credible source of information and advice. Here are

two of the print ads …

…and we can now see two of the TV ads…


A shot from the TV ad

The campaign was a great success and repositioned the NSPCC from

being synonymous with cruelty and instead aligned them with support,

understanding and empathy for parents. You could visually represent it as

moving from one side of the fence to the other – like this:

From this: Parents NSPCC Cruelty

To this : Parents NSPCC Cruelty

However, the next challenge was to be the most difficult faced so far – to

make the public do something.


Some feedback on the NSPCC work had been ‘so what do you want me to

do?’. Certainly research had shown that the public were ready to do

something – they just needed the justification or confidence to do it. At the

same time, over the three years that had passed since the launch of FULL

STOP the NSPCC’s communications had started to return to old ways –

piecemeal and disconnected. When I arrived in late 2001, work was just

beginning on a new piece of communication.

The Cartoon Campaign came straight out of the need to provoke action

from the public. The NSPCC and Government research showed that cruelty

was nearly always avoidable if the will was there to stop it. We needed to

provide that motivation for people to do something. And it was going to be

tougher than we thought.

The challenge for the communications was simple – move the British public

from awareness, but impotence, to action. However, the truth was that

while in research people might say they wanted to do something, the reality

was that they were very nervous of reporting suspected abuse. High profile

media stories of wrongly accused child cruelty cases had made the public

very concerned about getting the accusations wrong, they felt nervous

about being outed as the source of the claims and the public also


questioned the morality of whether it was right to be responsible in splitting

up a family.

The creative breakthrough came through deciding - after research – that

we needed to make the concerns that you might have if you intervene,

irrelevant. Put simply, don’t mention them. Instead, compellingly and

powerfully tell the audience that if they don’t do something children will die.

We needed something that didn’t dwell on the issue of what happens to

you if you don’t do something – instead told you what happens to the child

if you don’t – a far more emotionally rich area.

This breakthrough defined our strategy from there on. It produced a series

of ideas aimed at provoking action, one of which was the idea of using a

Cartoon boy getting beaten and abused by his father to show what really

happens if you don’t do something. Immediately we could see that a

Cartoon allowed us to be more graphic, honest and powerful than ever

before.

The NSPCC felt this was a challenging idea but it was also a BIG IDEA. It

would have been really easy to buy a safer option. But this was a

breakthrough communication. We were hoping to take the public out of

their comfort zone – and asking the public to take such a big step required

all of us having to do the same.


Interestingly, it was the qualitative research and the internal approval

process at the NSPCC which pointed the way to our next stage of

development.

The Campaign itself ran for 4 weeks. The 60” commercial ran for half that

time then followed by 30” and 10” cutdowns. Alongside this was a 48-sheet

campaign that ran in large conurbations around the country.

A shot from the TV ad:


The print visual

This was intended to not only reinforce the message that ‘Real Children

Don’t Bounce Back’ but also give the issue gravitas by having an ‘on-street’

presence.

Now this campaign wasn’t just about one ad – the thought of provoking

action and ‘Real Children Don’t Bounce Back’ needed to work across many

media channels. We developed an interactive and digital campaign to run

alongside the main above the line activity.

For our Donors and Campaigners mailings intended for this time, the

message of ‘Real Children Don’t Bounce Back’ was used as the vehicle

from which we could communicate to this audience about the need to


advertise and raise funds to help end cruelty to children. Here is some of

this material.

We integrated the idea into the PR campaign as well. For example we put

together an alliance with The Sun that gave us a wonderful launch piece.

And, inevitably, the campaign created a great deal of debate. The Daily

Express ran a story headlined ‘Is this the sickest ad you’ve ever seen?’.

Two days later their letters page published the public’s response…


There were none in agreement with The Express’ stance.


The campaign’s effectiveness was of course, the most important element

in our minds. Outstanding creative that is fresh and genuinely different and

superbly integrated through the line only becomes outstanding

communications if it achieves the results you need. The Cartoon campaign

did just that.

First, calls to the NSPCC Helpline rose by 100%. Second, the tracking

results, run through NOP, showed that:

• 77% thought that the campaign would make them more likely to call

the NSPCC for advice if they thought a child was being abused.

• 88% agreed that the campaign would make people more aware of

the need to do something

We also had letters and emails of support from members of the public –

some of whom had been moved to report abuse and some who just wanted

to say how powerful they thought the campaign was.

The campaign idea is about ending cruelty to children by motivating the

public to do something. But, as we said earlier, the overall Mission to end

cruelty to children encompasses many issues – child deaths, supporting

parents, physical punishment, someone to turn to for every child. While

FULL STOP continued to provide our unifying idea, it was clear we needed

to move on. Media neutral planning was the logical next step.


To ensure we were true to the central campaign idea, whilst dealing

effectively with the range of secondary themes and the specific needs and

interests of communications, fundraising, lobbying and service provision,

we introduced the concept of milestones.

This was quite a straightforward idea – demonstrate the value of media

neutral planning and integrated execution by results. With a limited budget

it di not take much persuasion to convince people that we would achieve a

bigger bang for our buck by concentrating our spend over two or three

milestone activities each year. Having achieved concensus on this it was

short step to genuinely open planning.


Shots from Babies & Toddlers TV ad

Integration can, of course, take many forms – it is not necessarily a simple

main visual being shared across all the materials – that is replication rather

than integration. In fact it should be a central core idea or strategy

executed differently across the relevant media. Our objective is always to

maximise the desired response from the audience – not simply to make

sure the same visuals were seen in every audience touchpoint. Consumer


or audience touchpoints are the key to understanding media neutral

planning and integration – we need to be able to understand how each

touchpoint affects the nature of the message and the campaign idea. For

example, our idea of ‘Supported Parents Means Safer Children’ which was

the platform for our 2003 Babies & Toddlers milestone, was very

empathetic on a broadcast level using communications that showed the

NSPCC understood the difficulties of parenting - but the brochures and

face to face activity had more direct advice, support and tips on parenting.

Growing our integrated capabilities will be a key ongoing focus for us and

our Agencies. It requires ideas that can work in every media and the

determination and vision to make them work.

So how have we achieved this? Well, we are still developing and striving to

improve but we now have an established open process which is helping us

to achieve more effective, integrated communication. Media neutral

planning begins with the audiences for whom the communication is

intended. We begin by addressing the range of audiences within the scope

of the activity – donors, parents, children, campaigners, the government,

etc. A good deal of open thinking goes on in advance of preparation of a

brief, involving a range of internal departments and external agencies.

When a brief is written, it is referred to as an ‘interagency and cross-

functional brief’. It is the master brief for the milestone and applies equally


to all those involved in delivery. The brief is presented – usually by me – to

all agencies and internal functions. The most recent briefing was delivered

to nearly 50 people. Agencies and departments then use the master brief to

create specific briefs for their own teams, but the talking starts

immediately through fully open relationships, inter-agency and inter-

function, so that the response to the brief is delivered by everybody

involved, to everybody involved – not in a series of separate unconnected

sessions which must be stitched back together later.

Integrated delivery is also supported by a further example of open structure

and open relationships, a ‘milestone implementation group’ comprising

representatives from all parties meeting fortnightly to ensure delivery is on

track.

Results are shared, evaluation pooled and lessons learned together for the

next milestone.

In parallel – ultimately giving a stronger foundation for future integration

and confidence in our media neutral planning – we have conducted a full

brand review, produced a new brand guide and engaged the organization

and agency in its delivery. We have also carried out a five-year strategy

review of the FULL STOP strategy, with all agencies and members of staff


(2000 of them) having the opportunity to be involved in the shaping of the

NSPCC’s future.

This review has given an even clearer focus to communications planning

and was a major factor in the success of our recent someone to turn to

milestone.

Our most recent milestone – someone to turn to for every child, has been

the best example yet of the process coming together.

So we now have an established process for media neutral planning – but

we need to improve further. It is still hardest of all to tie donor


communications and public education work closer together. And the full

integration of evaluation still has a way to go before we can consider it to

be perfect. The next step here is to engage evaluation and polling agencies

earlier in the process.

The FULL STOP Campaign and our milestone communications have

combined a shared vision and powerful ideas across many subject areas

and through the line. This has been able to unite our varied audiences and

the organization itself behind one clear mission, in terms of the FULL

STOP message, but also behind diverse platforms as you’ve seen with our

wide range of campaigns.

We will continue in trying to create the most powerful unifying creative

ideas possible within the FULL STOP umbrella - not as an end in itself but

as a means in changing public behaviour. The challenge for us and our

Agencies is being able to get the most out of these ideas through genuinely

open planning and open evaluation.

And it is that that will determine how successful we are in contributing to

bringing an end to cruelty to children forever.


Documents

The NSPCC as Integrated Marketer - Centre for … NSPCC as Integrated Marketer John Grounds, Director of Communications, NSPCC March 2004 Transcript of talk given at the Centre for