Founded by a sufferer of mental health, Laura Darrell, the #itaffectsme campaign is a mental health awareness campaign that has a plan to:

“get people talking, to end stigma and to make the world sit up and accept that mental illness affects us all.”

By gaining global popularity, the campaign has set up a donation page with the charity Mind.  They encourage people to take a ‘selfie’ with a post-it note on their forehead saying #itaffectsme, share it  over social media with a link to the Mind donation page and then to donate to the cause.

In total, the campaign has raised over £2,000 for Mind and have reached over 3.5 million people. The campaign is also popualr in the press, being interviewed and written about by many broadcastors and magazines.

Laura Darrell also set up a similar petition to Help My Health on the website www.change.org. Unlike my research set-up petition on the website, Laura’s has  58,293 supporters for the cause.

The #itaffectsme campaign interests me because of its national recognition though such a simple marketing technique. This gave me inspiration to promote my campaign over social media, using similar tools to encourage supporters to join in.

In order to plan my budget correctly, I researched into the key elements of finance and how broke down what I would need and how much each cost would be.

Direct Costs:

Creative Cloud package – For all apps on a monthly plan it is £68.60 a month – https://creative.adobe.com/plans?plan=edu&store_code=gb. I would choose this plan because I don’t plan on having it for a year, so by choosing this option I can opt out when I want.

Travel – I would have travel expenses when the marketing team will travel around different areas and to schools. However, I am not including car or insurance expenses in this as my employees should already own a car. To work out an estimate of how much it would cost, I used a fuel calculator site – http://www.fuel-economy.co.uk/calc.html.

Recording equipment to use to do the voice over for the video – I found a site that offers a daily rate of £6 to hire out a microphone – http://www.livesystems.co.uk/hire/sound-equipment/microphones.

Indirect Costs:

Graphic Designers (x2) – I will need a team of two graphic designers (one being myself) that will produce the animation video. They will be needed for approximately 2 months. I found a site that calculates the median for a graphic designers hourly wage which is £10 an hour – http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Graphic_Designer/Salary.

Marketing team (x2) – There will be a team of two marketers who will have a contract for 12 months, and throughout the year will visit different areas promoting the project, and keeping up to date over social media sites. The median for a marketing managers hourly wage is £10 – http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Marketing_Manager/Salary

Other Costs:

Posters and flyers – I looked on VistaPrint to find the cost of size A4 posters and size A5 flyers. They sold in batches, and I decided to go for a batch of 500, which should cover the amount for a year.

A4 posters – £44.99 – http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/custom-flyers.aspx?txi=16907&xnid=TopNav_Flyers++(linked+item)_Marketing+Materials&xnav=TopNav

A5 flyers – £23.99 – http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/custom-flyers.aspx?txi=16907&xnid=TopNav_Flyers++(linked+item)_Marketing+Materials&xnav=TopNav

Advertising on social media – I looked at how much advertising would cost on Facebook and you can choose your own daily budget, which calculates how much advertising time and space you will get. I opted for the minimum charge which was £5 a day. I will do this for 6 months, however this could change and so could the budget.

Contingency Costs:

Freelance outsourcing – This is a contingency cost just incase we need to get someone in to help with the project. A guest lecturer came in and spoke about his freelance career as a animator and visual effects designer. He mentioned an average freelancer daily rate is £275 (depending on level of experience) so I will base my calculations on this estimate.

Stamp Out Stigma is a campaign leaded by the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW) to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness and substance use disorders. They have a goal

“to change perceptions and reduce the stigma of mental illness and substance use disorders by encouraging people to talk about them.”

What particularly interested me about their campaign is their marketing posters:

The consistency in all of the posters adds even more to the powerful messages being conveyed. Using high contrast and high quality imagery, viewers have an instant connection with the young people who clearly suffer with a mental health problem. The lexemes used are powerful and emotional, and having them being ripped away from their mouth implies these are labels that person thinks they have, and they no longer have a voice.

Digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. It is the idea of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of multimedia, including graphics, audio, video, and Web publishing. This is an interesting alternative to telling a narrative, giving the storyteller a bigger for range for creativity and interactivity.

In John’s lecture, he explained some useful attributes of digital narratives:

• Challenges the boundaries of traditional narratives
• Blurs the role of the author and reader
• Attacks the authority of the addresser
• Questions the passivity of the  addressee
• Emphasises collaboration
• Associative linking – digital and web communication allows instantaneous linking between documents.
• Non-linear and non-hierarchical structures
• Users can have multiple roles – consumers as well as contributors
• Multimedia, interactive and dynamic

My campaign video could possibly be in the style of a digital narrative, having people tell their stories of living with a mental health disorder.

James Curran is a London based animator who specialises in creating animated gifs. His work is visually interesting and consistent, using a unique style to differentiate his work.

Graham showed us one of his video’s “NYC Gifathon”. I particularly like this video for its simple yet effective design. It is a montage of 30 gifs he made, displaying something that happened each day whilst he was in New York. The music and sound effects he use in the background also add effect, playing in synchronisation with the fast motion video.

Below are screenshots of some of the individual gifs used in the video. The style of the motion graphics are consistent, which makes it look appealing and professional.