5 Social Media Posts:

Advertising Flyer, also for use on Instagram Stories:

This report is a reflection on my journey and the process of creating a cross platform campaign for an external client, Bags of Taste. “Bags of Taste (BoT) are a Limited company that has developed an innovate behaviour change programme that works with people in food poverty, to change the way they cook, shop and eat forever” (Weston, 2020). For this campaign I had planned to create a four week cross-platform social media campaign, using their existing social media and creating a more active presence online. Aligned with a brief from the client I had to target the campaign to a new audience, 18-24 year olds, I also decided to focus my attention on younger people and families from lower income areas, as well as disabled people, and people recovering from mental illness (Tayla, 2018).

I first started off by doing my research, due to the client’s company spreading nationally, this was something I had to consider. The market and target audience I was looking to advertise to was a lot larger than any project, that I myself, have ever done before. I made sure I had done my research, really questioning the client on their values and beliefs as well as taking everything down that I was told during the first presentation of the brief with the client.

I produced my first campaign plan where I had written out what I had found out from my extensive research and also how I planned to carry out my campaign. The feedback that I got back from my client was very positive, especially the caution and awareness for who I was to target with this campaign, as this variable was very specific and important to the client.

When planning my campaign, I was looking at advertising across the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, due to 18-24 year olds being some the most active users on social media (Chen, 2020) and Bags of Taste already having accounts on these platforms that were active and established. My aim to direct BoT to this new audience, is in the hopes of attracting more people towards the classes and allowing more young people a chance to get out of food poverty early or to not enter it at all. The two animations I created were drafts for more professional version to be made. According to Fontein (2018) videos are much more successful on Facebook, but recently InstagramTV (IGTV) has been introduced to the Instagram social media platform and therefore a short advertisement video could be successful on that platform as well and this is where I would most likely distribute my animations. The five of the eight social media posts that I created, were mainly for Instagram as they stand out on the Bags of Taste own page and social media feed (West, 2019) that my target audience will see when scrolling down their social media ‘feeds’ and ‘timelines’ (Chen, 2020).

This campaign was quite difficult to plan due to the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that Bags of Taste was closed for business temporarily. Which therefore meant that I was never able to attend a session and see how it worked and how the classes went. I also was unable to take any photographs of my own to use, so if I was planning on carrying out the campaign I would not have been as prepared as I had planned or would have liked. However, the client provided us with lots of images from previous classes as well as images of finished cooked dishes from sessions, as well as answering all questions I had regarding how the sessions run and how they work. This was very beneficial as allowed be to better understand the company even though I could not attend a session due to the unprecedented circumstances and also gave me lots of visual resources to use for my poster, video animations and social media posts.

One thing I noted when Alicia was first presenting Bags of Taste to me was that she was concerned about advertising BoT to 18-24 year olds. I understood that I had to be careful when marketing this campaign as to not advertise to every Education company and individual as, due to the risk of Bags of Taste turning into cooking classes as opposed to specialist educational 4 week sessions aimed at changing the way people in food poverty, shop, cook and eat forever that are free of charge, and not have anyone take advantage of this. Bags of Taste aims to keep its strong values in educating people in food poverty and with more deprived backgrounds. Even though the target audience I have been briefed to work with is 18-24 year olds, non-specifically, I have decided to focus my attention to the more underprivileged 18-24 year olds, from lower income areas, as well as disabled people, and people recovering from mental illness. As I believe Bags of Taste would benefit people like this greatly not only to improve their lives and their health, but to also get them involved, included in a community and in some cases aid to be reintroduced back into society.

I think if I was to improve on this campaign next time, I would have sat down with the client more frequently and arranged meetings along the way, to keep track of progress more closely and make sure that all aspects of the campaign stay aligned with the brief and the clients plan and ideas for their company. As well as this I would go on to perfect my draft video animations, as with some work I think they would be really affective in advertising Bags of Taste (Thackeray, 2008). I learnt during planning this campaign that organisation is very important when it comes to preparing something that could be so critical to a company. I made sure to keep track of what I had done and what I needed to do throughout this project, from when I first started my research and the campaign to the final touches of my proposal portfolio presentation.

I believe that my cross platform campaign is a strong plan and a great start towards good growth for Bags of Taste as a company, with not only their current clients but also to attract the newer audience that I was briefed to target my campaign towards.

References:

Chen, J. (2020). Social media demographics to inform your brand’s strategy in 2020. SproutSocial.

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/ [Accessed: 21/04/2020]

Fontein, D, (2018). How to Run a (Successful) Cross-Platform Social Media Campaign. Hootsuit Inc. 2020.

https://blog.hootsuite.com/cross-platform-campaign/ [Accessed: 18/04/2020]

Hearn, I. (2019). Research: The Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2020 (by Platform).https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/new-research-whats-the-best-time-to-post-on-social-media- in-2 [Accessed: 18/04/2020]

Scherer, J. 2020.

https://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675437098/social-media-marketing-plan [Accessed: 18/04/2020]

Thackeray, R., Neiger, B.L., Hanson, C.L. and McKenzie, J.F. (2008). Enhancing promotional strategies within social marketing programs: use of Web 2.0 social media. Health promotion practice, 9(4), pp.338-343.

Tayla. (2018). How to Easily Target the 18-25 year old Demographic, Locally, Nationally and Globally!

https://pmyb.co.uk/easily-target-18-25-year-old-demographic-locally-nationally-globally/ [Accessed: 18/04/2020]

West, C. (2019). 6 standout social media marketing example to inspire your strategy. Sprout Strategy.
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-examples/ [Accessed 18/05/202]

SproutSocial. (2020). Social Media Video Tips & Strategies. SproutSocial. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/topics/social-media-video/ [Accessed: 18/04/2020]