For your final project, your team will design a strategic communication campaign aimed at influencing a specific target audience to: (1) start a new positive behavior, (2) not start a negative behavior, (3) change their current positive/negative behavior (e.g., increase or reduce frequency), and/or (4) give up a current negative behavior as a way to help address a social issue/problem. This is a breakdown of steps 1-5.
It is recommended that you use the following breakdown as a template for the paper.
Step 1: Describe the social issue, background, purpose, and focus of your social campaign
- Briefly identify the social issue, sometimes referred to as the “wicked problem,” your plan will be addressing (e.g., tobacco use, air pollution, water contamination, literacy, homelessness, etc.).
- Identify any sponsoring organizationsyou plan to collaborate with in developing and implementing your campaign. These may be local or national organizations.
- Summarize key background information leading to the development of this plan, ideally using reliable statistics (e.g., percent of unplanned teen pregnancies)
- What is the campaign purpose, the intended impact (e.g., reduced teen pregnancies by 25% by 2020)?
- What is the campaign focus, the approach you will be using to contribute to your plan’s purpose? Areas of focus may be behavior-related, population-related, or product-related strategies.
Step 2: Conduct a situational analysis (SWOT)
- What organizational strengths will your plan maximize?
- What organizational weaknesses will your plan minimize?
- What environmental opportunities will your plan take advantage of?
- What environmental threats will your plan prepare for?
- What prior and similar campaign efforts are noteworthy?