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Brief
Teenagers are a much-maligned and often-ignored group, and yet their views are incredibly important to our future. Barnardo’s believes that helping young people also means helping Britain, and that their futures should be national concern. The brief was therefore to start a conversation with the UK public and provide a context that will persuade more people to support Barnardo’s and improve vulnerable and disadvantaged children’s lives.
Strategy
The Teens Speech, created by Poke, was a platform from which Britain’s young people could voice their opinions, and be heard by an adult society that all-too-often condemns its youth. According to Collette Collins, from Barnardo’s: “Last year we spoke out against the demonisation of children and young people in the UK. By giving young people the opportunity to have their say, we are addressing this head on by providing genuine and value and insight about this often ignored group.”
Execution
Over three months, Poke, on behalf of the children’s charity Barnardo’s, interviewed hundreds of teenagers from across the UK, giving them the chance to air their views on a wide range of issues they consider important. Teenagers were invited to get involved online, uploading video and comments to pages on MySpace, Facebook, Youtube and on The Teens' Speech blog.
Selected contributors were invited to participate in The Teens’ Speech film which was premiered on the MySpace homepage at 3:10pm GMT on Christmas Day 2009.
All uploaded content needed to be moderated prior to transmission to ensure that none of it was offensive. This moderation was undertaken by moderation and community management agency eModeration, which had to strike the perfect balance between moderating offensive material and allowing the teenagers to express themselves and their opinions in their own way.
Hundreds of teenagers responded to the call . They uploaded their views on topics as diverse as crime, drugs, sex and relationships, money, family and friends, cultural diversity, politics and their views on Britain’s future.
As you would expect from a campaign aimed at teenagers, discussion of the campaign was enabled across multiple platforms: the Teens’ Speech blog, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the Barnardo’s website.
Results
Teens responded positively, taking the opportunity to upload serious commentary on British society, and although every upload was checked, they proved themselves trustworthy: there was very little content that could not be posted. Naturally, all online discussion of the videos was also moderated by eModeration to ensure that the conversations stayed ‘clean’.
Hundreds of teenagers posted videos: the final selection of contributors features in The Teens’ Speech film: abrutally honest, intimate and often moving view of Britain through the eyes of its teenagers. This closing post of the campaign post by Poke’s Vik Sharma, sums it up beautifully:
“ ....there are hundreds of thousands of young people posting and commenting on each other's videos. Yes, some videos are spectacular examples of existential navel gazing, but others are honest, intimate, funny and really, really creative. They use sophisticated editing, text, animations, interviews and music to create little no-budget video vignettes. A handful of these video diarists have developed a massive following, a constituency of digital natives, who see the internet as their turf, their place to express themselves honestly and without interference from adults, corporations or any other manifestation of 'The Man'.”
The film premiere on MySpace had over 32,000 views on Christmas Day alone. It was also a hit on YouTube, with more than 50,000 views in ten days.
Peter Beech, the partner running the project at Poke, said: “The Teens’ Speech was an opportunity to give a voice to teenagers to express their views on Britain today, and the issues they face. These are the people who will shape the future of Britain, so their views matter. Ensuring teenagers have promising and happy futures should be a national concern, which is why we created The Teens’ Speech. We wanted the experience to be a very positive one, so eModeration’s work in moderating the content submitted to the project was vital, to make sure no-one was exposed to abusive, illegal or inappropriate content.”
Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration, said: “Barnardo’s does an amazing job of helping children and teenagers in Britain. Teens often go unheard, and yet their views are incredibly important to our future. We have a duty both to listen to their views and protect them from abuse: physical, verbal and virtual. Our job is to work with organisations like Barnardo’s to ensure that the content they see online is safe.”
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