Campaign Ideas

We had a group meeting yesterday, and we worked together on the specifics of the campiagn ideas.
after much deliberation we decided that the campaign must target the younger generations, and the best way to do this is capatalise on Japan's love of technology and use a social media strategy.

So we propose to create a Manga inspired film, which would be shown in Universities, educating students to enter our competition to create an animation/manga/animae short film. This films, would highlight the issues surrounding the killing of Dolphins in Japan and could be shared online as virals.
The idea behind this is that where previous westernised attempts to target the japanese public about the killing of dolphins have failed it is because it has been done so in an agressive and emotional fashion. As the Japanese are very passionate about their culture, this campiagn aims to intergrate with the Japanese people, invite them to contribute and share their opinions making this an interactive viral campaign that does not insult them on mass, or presume they support the killing of dolphins.
We also felt that mobile phones should be included as many Japanese access the internet via their phones more frequently than other sources. 2D barcode scanning is also very popular in Japan, so a poster campaign supporting the competition, would enable the scanned barcode to direct the audience straight to our website.
The contents of this website would be:

• Film submissions
• Film examples
• Tips/Hints on how to create your film
• Posters available to download
• Sign-up to our newsletter
• An educational section about Dolphins
• An educational section about the environment in relation to Dolphins
• Petition
• Dolphin avatar animation

Using mobile phones, or rather smart phones we thought that we could make an App. One that allowed you to create your own dolphin, name it, care for it and allow it to swim free with others. This dolphin, is an animal avatar of it's owner. As well as actively involving the audience in a 'fun' way to learn, love and save the Dolphins. It will also attract other people, and be a talking point around the wider issues of the campaign.
The Dolphin avatars, could swim together  across computer screens throughout Japan-like a protest, but online and removing humans so that dolphins are the key point.

This idea is similar to the Beat Bullying 'The Big March' campaign that allowed the public to create avatars of themselves and walked across 60 websites online-to protest the bullying of young people.

However, issues surrounding using this idea is that in the Beat Bullying campaign, those websites where partnered with the campiagn and gave consent. We would have to further investigate whether Japanese websites would be so willing.

Over all it is important to appraoch this campiagn as if we were Japanese, to assume that they are not supportive of the killing and to treat the masses as ignorant not guily. By asking for their involvement we should provide a creative platform to showcase our beliefs without hostily or cultural imperialism.

It is also important that we include the logo's and information about the umbrella groups fighting to save dolphins, on all the campaign material.

This blog was also quite interesting.
/http://morganvhs5.edublogs.org/2010/10/06/of-interest-to-me-introduction/

http://www.adpunch.org/entry/wwf-uses-guerrilla-marketing-to-save-maui-dolphins/