Home-Start
Campaign: “Supernannies not wanted: Real people with real parenting experience can make a real difference to families”
Aim: To recruit volunteers with parenting experience to support families that are struggling to cope. To focus on recruiting volunteers in Birmingham and Norfolk, particularly 25 to 45 year olds and people from BME communities.
Number of people involved: Approx. 4 (TimeBank communications team)
Launched: August 2005
Campaign description: TimeBank devised a volunteer recruitment campaign on behalf of Home-Start to appeal to parents under the age of 45; to find volunteers to support families not coping with parenthood. They targeted urban Birmingham and rural Norfolk, using census date and ACORN profiling to inform the media campaign. For example, several areas were identified as having particularly low car ownership and so were targeted via bus stop advertising. This awareness raising activity complimented a direct mail drive; direct mail has relatively high response rates among the low income social groupings that characterised the target areas.
Print advertising in local newspapers (including local ethnic titles) was used to leverage the trust and familiarity associated with them. TimeBank also distributed leaflets at local nurseries.
In order to create materials relating specifically to the target audiences, TimeBank created two versions of the Super Nanny creative – one using a white model and another using a BME model.
PR work: TimeBank commissioned a survey to prove that parents prefer informal, unofficial parenting support from "real" people like Home-Start volunteers. The survey also asked respondents which celebrity they would be most likely to take parenting advice from.
The survey results formed the basis of the campaign press release, which hooked into Mother’s Day. It was picked up by the Press Association who distributed the story to every newsroom in the country. This secured the campaign a substantial amount of national and regional coverage, with stories about “mums in need of a bit of help”. Much of this coverage included interviews and profiles of Home-Start volunteers. Trisha Goddard also endorsed the campaign and was interviewed for Real People magazine. Information about the campaign was also posted on networking sites such as www.netmums.com.
Budget: Approximately £50,000 media spend.
Outside agencies involved: TimeBank for the recruitment campaign and ACORN for the population information.
Results: By mid September 2007 the campaign had registered 1410 volunteers, and registrations were still coming in at an average of 16 per week. 73% of these were women aged under 45. 21% of the registrations in Birmingham were from BME communities. It proved harder to recruit volunteers from rural areas of Norfolk. The evaluation concluded that a centralised approach is perhaps not the best way to recruit in rural areas and that future campaigns would take more of a grassroots approach, empowering local branches rather than recruiting on their behalf.
Contact: Madeline Willis www.TimeBank.org.uk and Annie O'Brian www.home-start.org.uk
