Campaign Case Study

Jessica Head

Executive Summary
Guttersnipes, an independent film written by Hollywood producer, Joe Aaron inspires audiences everywhere with his heartwarming story about a 17 year-old homeless girl, Jo, who finds a 12 year-old autistic girl, Waverly, abandoned on the streets. The next day Jo finds Waverly in the same spot, cold and terrified. Jo feeling upset and moved by the situation reluctantly decides to take Waverly in. Because of Waverlys quirks, rules and routines, Jo recognizes that although she has tried to make a home for Waverly, the environment is too harsh for her. When she discovers Waverly may have a family, the girls leave the city in hopes that their journey will lead to a real home. Joe Aarons career in television production includes a stint at Childrens Television Workshop, an on-air promotion writer/producer for HBO, Cinemax, Comedy Central, E!, and is co-creator of Disneys cartoon character, Doug. He also is the writer/producer/director of the feature film Crazy Jones, winner of many awards including, Audience Choice Best Feature at Cinequest International Film Festival. For the production of Guttersnipes, Joe Aaron hand selected interns chosen by Harding University professors to help him design and implement a social media fundraising campaign through a variety of social media platforms for the production of this film. As a team of 8 students we discussed that a crowd-funding technique through a social media campaign would be the most beneficial way of exposing the film concept quickly to possible donors on a nationwide level. Kickstarter, although a fairly new social media program, would offer donors access to a variety of benefits including donor insurance. This assured individuals that funds would be returned if we did not collect the estimated base cost of the film production. The social media crowd-funding techniques and a Guttersnipes Gala hosted in Little Rock, Arkansas, provided favorable results for the social media campaign team. Through the Kickstarter website, Gutternsipes raised $75,218 exceeding our goal. The film is currently being produced in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Mission
Raise $75,000 through an online platform to ensure production of Gutternsipes by 2013.

Situational Analysis
Social media marketing can have favorable outcomes if implemented correctly by targeting specific audiences. 73% of American teens and 47% of online adults use social networking websites. Currently, there are 400 million Facebook users, 20 million unique visitors to Twitter per month and 6 billion video views on YouTube eachmonth according to the Pew Research Center. Social media was a no brainer for the objectives of our mission in most cases. However, after discussions with several public relations and advertising agencies in Little Rock, Arkansas, it became evident to our team that although the national statistics of use in social media platforms are high, Little Rock, Arkansas does not have similarly high statistical online activity measurements. Because Kickstarter had already been implemented as the main fundraising platform before our intern team had been chosen, we decided to reach out to corporate businesses headquartered in Little Rock individually. The incentive for most of these businesses was that film production would bring attention to the city, enabling many of these businesses to gain outside exposure excluding locals. As public relations professionals, we knew the importance of primary and secondary research when designing a fundraising campaign. It was vital to our team as we moved forward to identify our target audience in order to gain a desired profit through Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a fairly new platform for creative projects to gain financial support. They house a variety of independently funded projects including, film, games, music, art and technology. Creators are able to set goals and deadlines for interested donors to fund their creative projects. In the brave new world of independent cinema without any set rules, a platform like Kickstarter can be ideal for meeting financial funding goals. Our team wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to give donors insurance (as one of the rules in the Kickstarter program is: If funding goals are not met, all donors will receive their donated funds.) which Kickstarter provides. We decided that the only way to take advantage of the current social media platform and ensure that funding goals would be met was to create a social media marketing plan on a national level. We created a Google document explaining a variety of non-profit organizations, corporations, independent bloggers, and celebrity figures in autism audiences in hopes to cause a viral online reaction, raising all funds through the Kickstarter platform. Our team also recognized that the average time for an independent film to be funded and produced is 10 years. We knew that in order to defeat this statistic, we would have to have a solid reputation with the right communities and strong objectives, ensuring that we would reach our goal.

Key Messages, Objectives & Strategies

Exposure through multiple social media facets was necessary in creating awareness about the films purpose and possible donations made through Kickstarter. Through the specific communities we had targeted nationally in our Google document, we were able to develop relationships that shared the goal of spreading autism awareness. I specifically worked with autism publications and foundations to gain interest through their events that they host annually. This included many sponsored 5K and fun run races in various cities across the United States that would feature booths set up where people could donate funds through our Kickstarter website.

Objective #1
Identify a celebrity associated with an existing fan base to promote films inspiration.

Strategy:
We had several associated celebrities that we wanted to expose; mainly in the autism awareness world that we felt would gain the interest of a fan base for making this film. Temple Grandin, an internationally respected specialist in designing livestock handling systems, is the most noted high-functioning person with autism in the world today. She is a popular columnist in the magazine, Autism, Aspergers Digest and has a powerful voice with many associated with most highly recognized autism organizations and publications. Having Temple Grandins voice as a supporter for the making of this film, empowered many in her following to donate funds. Joe Aaron, the writer of Guttersnipes also has wide shpere of influence as the co-creator of Dis neys Doug, standing along with several other contributors to the making of the film including, Steve Nicolaides, producer, who has worked on three successful films including, Stand by Me, Boyz N the Hood, and School of Rock. We hypothesized that this fan base could support the foundation of our strategy using a viral social media campaign.

Objective #2
Address a popular topic that allows the audience to become the dreamer and filmmaker of Guttersnipes.

Strategy:

Through Kickstarter, we wanted to allow our sponsors to feel ownership of a project that they helped implement. In order to do this effectively, we offered incentives for donating to the Kickstarter website. The following page identifies the different gifts provided in exchange for donations.

Key Messages, Objectives & Strategies

Objective #1
Develop relationships with local businesses who support the making of Gutternsipes in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Strategy:
Create a Guttersnipes Gala that features a variety of Hollywood paraphernalia in a silent auction. This was hosted by the Little Rock Club in downtown Little Rock. Much success in developing local relationships and funds was established at the event.

Secondary Implementation
Through all of these objectives and strategies, we had managed to raise $42,000 three weeks away from our deadline date of meeting our $75,000 funding goal. Because the Kickstarter program allows donors to reciee funds back if original goals had not been met, it was necessary for us to find some avenue in our online campaign that we had not yet used. We decided to take advantage of a current Facebook website hoax to gain more funding support. At Harding University, a sorority group, Iota Chi, had left their Facebook page options open to the general public accidentally. Several groups around campus decided to take advantage of this page and let anyone be added to the Iota Chi page. The entire student body was welcomed to wear pink on Thursday to show their support for their new sisters in Iota Chi. Soon, this fake sorority became viral and had over 100,000 members extending to multiple universities across the world. Once the membership was at its peak, we introduced the idea of Guttersnipes. Soon, we had donors from all over the country showing their support for the film by making donations on our Kickstarter page. Through this viral social media epidemic, we were able to raise $33,218.

Evaluation
I share this case study because I feel that this internship has been most valuable to me in exploring and better understanding the utilization of social media platforms. Although we achieved some success through our original objectives, more than half of our money was received by a last resort attempt to generate all necessary funding for the project. Social media platforms can offer both creative and unexpected marketing opportunities but it is necessary to know who the audience is to achieve desirable results. I believe that the lack of primary and secondary research is what caused inefficiency in funding. This project is also a valuable example of having flexibility in a plan to meet a clients needs. As interns, we were expected to raise $75,000 for this film in a 3 month period of time. Creating a social media campaigns on average take months of planning and research in order for it to be implemented properly, but experiencing early deadlines is a part of our business in public relations. Flexibility can most often be key to success.