A great campaign makes you see stop and see the world a little – or a lot – differently. It asks you to change your mindset and make a new and different decision. The goal of any campaign is for people to take action by buying a product, casting a vote or changing a behaviour. The challenge to any campaign is communication. And there’s one feature that every memorable campaign needs to share – integration.
Getting the best mix
Communication happens on so many levels and through so many channels. For example, At Marketing Zone, we communicate with most of our clients through email. It’s fast, efficient, green and inexpensive. We still use the phone and certainly enjoy face-to-face time with our clients, but a lot of day to day work is through email. At the same time, we recognise that email is our preference and not necessarily the best or only way to reach people. We know some people prefer to be contacted through a social networking site. They like to get messages from their Facebook homepage. Twitter a popular microblogging platform is also a great way to reach people in a targeted group. There’s also PR placements and traditional advertising. Our clients value seeing their brands and products in newspapers, magazines and blogs. There’s so many different ways you can reach people with a message – the trick is finding a solution that targets the right people with the right message at the right time.
Obama – a great campaign
President Obama isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. He created impressive television commercials, twittered regularly and ran a busy sms campaign. My.barackobama.com was another channel he used to get his message to the American people. Add to that regular appearances on youtube and it’s clear that his campaign worked because it could and did communicate with people in the ways they wanted to be communicated with. And it sent messages people were ready to hear. A campaign is great only when it reaches the people it targets and changes their behaviour.