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15andCounting: Strategy Behind a Social Media Campaign

video introduction to the 15andcounting campaign

15andCounting is a campaign by the International Planned Parenthood Foundation demanding better access to sexual health services for youth.  They are using a mix of old and new social media tools, from an e-petition and Flickr to Twitter, the SMS platform Mxit, and the music platform Dopetracks.

In this interview I ask Paul Bell, a campaign representative, about the strategic thinking behind their tool choice and how their use of these  online and mobile tools will lead to offline change in government policies towards youth.

What is the 15andCounting campaign?

15andCounting is a global campaign to demand better access to sexual health services and education for everyone. We’re now 15 years into a 20 year commitment signed by 179 governments to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights of all young people. Only five years remain and many governments are seriously failing to make progress against their goals. 15andCounting is encouraging young people to call their governments to task on their grave failings

How have governments failed to make progress to promote, protect, and provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services?

There are 1.5 billion young people in the world today and the majority of them live without access to condoms or contraception. This is contributing to: the spread of HIV, millions of unwanted pregnancies, millions of women continuing to die from pregnancy related causes every year, and millions of young people having to drop out of education at an early age.

Any attachment to the choice of the name?

Fifteen years ago, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, 179 governments signed up to a Programme of Action to improve the sexual and reproductive health of everyone. 2009 is the 15 year mark. People born in that year (1994) at the time of the ICPD, are now 15 years old and form part of the largest cohort of young people the world has ever seen – some 1.5 billion – who have a right to sexual and reproductive health services and information.

Why run the campaign now?

People born in 1994 at the time of the ICPD are now 15 years old and form part of the largest cohort of young people the world has ever seen – some 1.5 billion – who have a right to sexual and reproductive health services and information. Fifteen years after ICPD too many governments have failed to make good on their promises. Only five years remain for the vision of ICPD to become reality. Unless governments deliver on their promises young people will be denied services and information critical to their health and wellbeing.

What’s the motive for running the petition now?

The Count Me In petition will be delivered to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the 12^th of October, in an attempt to help persuade governments to promote, protect and fulfil their promise to provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services for all young people. October marks the 15^th anniversary of the ICPD conference in Cairo.

What are the network platforms you’re using to attain the goal of the campaign?

Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/15-and-counting)

Twitter (http://twitter.com/15andcounting)

Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDGoFfvvIXY&feature=channel_page)

Dopetracks (http://www.dopetracks.com/forums/4/topics/13784)

Millions of young people across the world do not have access to a computer, but do have a mobile phone. Therefore we are also working with MXit, an instant message provider to reach young people primarily in Africa through their mobile phones via a WAP site (www.15andcounting.mobi).  We are also launching SMS campaigns in Kenya, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico.

With a lot of social network sites, why did you choose these particular networks over the other network platforms?

Twitter has been used as a way to get buy-in form professional stakeholders in the charity/care sector and to connect with bloggers and influential voices in the conversation: we feel that Twitter is the ideal for this purpose, but as a secondary function it also works to extend the outreach direct to people for petition signatures.

Youtube was purely there to host the video, which is easily embedded into other sites.

Dopetracks is a unique online proposition: a community of beat-makers, singers, poets, rappers, all collaborating online via their online music player/recorder (so that people don’t need any proprietary kit). We felt that the target market will be able to express themselves effectively – and engage with – the campaign though music. These people are very active promoters of their music and it encourages brand advocates to raise awareness with their peers.

How is each of the networks used?

http://twitter.com/15andcounting – we’ve built up a following or stakeholders and interested parties, which has stimulated wider distribution through blog posts and ‘retweeting’ of the 15&Counting messages. We have used Twitter as a distribution channel, not as a content channel.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/15-and-counting/56924592285?_fb_noscript=1 – a Facebook group has been set up and is used to flag up news and drive discussion amongst members and an ‘Are you a Sexpert?’ application was developed to further engage our audience. This is designed to pull together a community of supporters and drove people to complete the survey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDGoFfvvIXY A video on what the campaign is all about was put together and uploaded onto Youtube – this is video is embedded into the 15andCounting homepage, and is used as an background information piece for the blog outreach.

http://www.dopetracks.com – We’re setting up a competition on Dopetracks – a large online music collaboration network so that young people can create and distribute tracks with a 15andCounting theme within the network and in other networks: These people are very active promoters of their music and it encourages brand advocates to raise awareness with their peers. They frequently use twitter, myspace and other networks to increase the distribution of their music. We’ll also be encouraging people to collaborate with other people in different countries, using our blog/ partner network.

We’ll also be using the collateral created to promote into local radio and with a ‘mixtape’ of the featured tracks.

How effective will these platforms be for your cause?

The web is essential for IPPF to reach the target audience. These social platforms allow the campaign to engage directly with young people and allow them to get connected to groups in their country or region who are working towards improving sexual and reproductive health and rights. More than anything, we’re looking at how to facilitate people to become advocates for the campaign and motivate others. We have created an instruction/ training blog to show our partners around the world to engage with social media http://15andcountinglearn.wordpress.com/

We’ve been effective in activating community support for our campaigns, including driving support for ‘buzz marketing’ initiatives. We have had two Digg.com front pages: http://digg.com/health/Best_Condom_Adverts_Ever (this drove 22,000 people to the site in 24 hours) and http://digg.com/educational/Teach_5_to_8_year_olds_masturbation_says_UN_agency (this encouraged 6000 people to bookmark the site and broke traffic figures for the site).

You realize that their many online petitions, most of which unfortunately have failed to make impact, what have you done not to suffer similar fate?

We have done everything we can to ensure that the petition makes an impact by supplementing it with a number of elements – we have created a dedicated website for the campaign, used social networking sites (as detailed above) to target a wide variety of youth, and used mobile phones to reach the population who have less access to the internet. In this way we hope that we have ‘randomized’ our petition as much as possible, making it available to the widest possible net, without targeting specific communities. As such we believe we have compiled a very robust study, for example in Africa we have had 94,000 people sign the petition through the .mobi site. Furthermore we know that the activists involved in this campaign will continue to work hard on the ground in their countries to ensure the message stays alive.

How will you reach the larger population, which is not much involved in using digital tools?

A combination of the below:

Advocacy programmes are being undertaken by IPPF member associations – IPPF works in 176 countries worldwide and a global leader in providing and advocating for the right to improved sexual and reproductive health. Here we

Mobile phones – as mentioned above, we are targeting millions of young people across the world who do not have access to a computer, but do have a mobile phone – both through SMS and instant messaging.

Postcards – postcards which allow people to sign the petition have been distributed in key communities across the globe

Critics say online polls are highly non-representative of the population, and the respondents are self-selected.  Isn’t this also a pseudo-petition?

To get truly representative engagement with the target audience, we would have to spend a huge amount of valuable resources engaging people on the ground in each country: that money would better be spent campaigning. Online is the most cost effective way to run the petition, and we’ve addressed the differing ways that people engage with the net in different countries (e.g. via mobile phone) and sought to facilitate signatures in non digital formats (eg. postcards).

How will it be delivered to government heads, especially those who signed the memorandum? And what is your expected outcome thereafter?

The Count Me In petition will be delivered to high-level United Nations officials on the 12^th of October, in an attempt to help persuade governments to promote, protect and fulfil their promise to provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services for all young people.

Through the 15andCounting campaign we will have engaged with a whole new generation and cohort of committed young advocates around the globe and we hope that these advocates will remain engaged with the issues 15andCounting addresses. We will continue to empower our youth advocates to become highly effective network builders and advocacy experts into the future.

Tempest in Cresent City – An online game about Hurricane Katrina

Description: To follow up on Talia’s post about the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a game has been developed by Global Kids and Game Pill in efforts to raise youth’s awareness about the “ongoing relief efforts in New Orleans“. The game, Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Cresent City, is played from the point of view of Vivica Waters, a fictional character who is searching for her mother in the aftermath of Katrina. Along the way, Vivica must help her fellow neighbors-in-distress while dodging debris and braving the rising flood waters. The accompanying website is full of resources and educational information about Hurricane Katrina’s impact in New Orleans along with ways to get invovled to help out.

PLAY THE GAME NOW!