Raising confidence and self esteem in young women in North Wales.
We launched a campaign in North Wales with the key aim of increasing confidence and self esteem in young women.
DreamBig was designed to inspire the next generation of young women to become confident, happy and healthy young women.
We developed this campaign after conducting research with girls aged 11-16 years about smoking. What actually followed was something more... We discovered that direct smoking messages would not work and that there were many reasons girls took up smoking [and other risky behaviours] at an early age - a lack of confidence and low self esteem. More than 10% of girls aged 11-16 years smoked or vaped in North Wales - double the number of boys - and this figure was higher in some areas in the region. Unlike other 'anti-smoking campaigns' we focused our attention towards prevention and following research with girls aged 11-16 years we found that most young smokers lacked confidence to say no, had few or no aspirations and goals and a low self esteem. We felt it was important to try and raise aspirations, confidence and self esteem in order to reduce the likelihood of young women taking part in risky behaviour - including smoking.
The campaign.
This campaign was supported the theory that if young women are happy, confident and have ambition, they are less likely to engage in risky behaviours such as smoking.
We found out from research that girls who took part in activities and sport are also less likely to smoke so we have included sport and activities as a motivator and way to make new friends.
Dream BIG was largely a digital campaign when it ran back in 2015, utilising social media to engage with the target audience.
A website was designed in co-creation with young women and it acted as a platform for girls to share their stories and blog about topics that were important to them. The content marketing strategy employed engaging tactics such as video and GIFs/ memes and co-created graphics and images. The website was supported by a growing Facebook and Instagram community - much of the content on the website was user generated content.
Key campaign elements:
- We worked with girls in North Wales to evolve the campaign over two years, focusing on their interests and what inspires them, to inform and develop the content marketing strategy.
- We developed a product that was owned and led by our target audience. The benefit of this was greater user involvement and engagement. Users of the site were actively creating blog posts and content that was meaningful, shareable and relevant to other girls of the same age.
The results.
The campaign and the website was handed over to the client after two years. During our involvement, we worked in co-creation with girls aged 11-16 to continuously update and improve the website and encourage the sharing of key messages by peers. The social media campaign reached half a million people in North Wales and the website was visited over 25,000 times during the campaign period. We also worked with over half of all secondary schools to launch and sustain the campaign.
The website continues to feature advice on health and happiness, career options and case studies, a range of activities that they can take part in outside of school and a section of the website now includes a dedicated page to exploring thoughts and feelings.
