The winner has been announced of the “Keep It Clean Super Hero” competition that was run by Newcastle City Council in association with Northumbria University.
The competition saw twenty-one students from the University’s BSC (Hons) Communication and Public Relations course respond to a ‘mock’ brief and pitch for the Council’s public facing “Keep It Clean” campaign – as part of their final year’s work.
The “Keep It Clean” campaign is aimed at encouraging behavioural change amongst people who litter, fly-tip and don’t pick up after their pets in Newcastle.
The twenty-one students pitched their quirky campaign ideas to a panel of six City Council and University specialists, who then short-listed the proposals down to the final four. Once they were in place it was up to the residents of Newcastle to decide who they felt was a worthy winner during a five-day social media voting window.
The four ideas / online votes were:
Samantha Isola “Operation Bin-Bam” – Keep it Clean you Filthy Animal! / [203 votes]
Kate Chapman “Eco Lass” – One City, One Mission, Play Your Part / [86 votes]
Stacey Tippin “Canny Clean” / [81 votes]
Joss Varney #LitterHero / [49 votes]
The ‘Keep It Clean’ competition winner, Samantha Isola, aged 22, was born and bred in Gibraltar; and is the eldest of four siblings. She names as her inspirations Sophia Amoruso (global fashion entrepreneur), Sheryl Sandberg (technology executive), Tina Fey (actress) and her dad – who has built up and developed several businesses down the years.
Samantha said: “I felt the project was both exciting and challenging throughout.”
In particular, Samantha found the research conducted at the beginning of her strategy to be interesting, as she was able to gain an important understanding of the local environment and the City Council delivers public services.
Samantha added: “Once I gathered all the information, I was then able to approach the task in a creative way, which allowed me to design a hard-hitting campaign.”
Samantha sees her dream job as working for a world-wide recognised brand such as Google. She concludes: “By following a live brief it has enabled me to develop an appreciation for how a professional Marketing and Public Relations firm would stick to a set brief and target the specific demographic. Given that we are all in our final year, I believe this has been a crucial experience as employment looms around the corner. Not only this, but I have gained a well-founded appreciation on the importance of communication and PR within an organisation.”
The PR Brief: The public relations, design and marketing challenge invited the students to come up with an ambitious campaign using the theme of “Super Heroes”. The character needed to appeal to the student demographic, 18-45 years / male & female, and use the environmental elements from Keep It Clean in a creative manner.
The character would have to have his/her own specific name and dedicated slogan – in keeping with the campaign brand. The Super Hero design had to meet a number of criteria as the winning concept would need to be versatile across a variety of different mediums from social media through to hardcopy advertising including leaflets, posters and bin stickers.
Samantha’s superhero character was a little masked dog capped crusader called “Bin-Bam” – which perfectly crossed over the key messages between litter and dog fouling.
The aim of Samantha’s “Operation Bin-Bam” campaign were:
- To generate an impactful social marketing campaign to change the attitudes and behaviours of students.
- To create an opportunity for students to make a difference for the benefit of themselves, residents and the Council.
- To educate students on how to keep their local areas clean and green.
- To increase awareness of the Newcastle City Council and reinforce the consequences of environmental crime.
Peter Gray, Head of Highways and Local Services at Newcastle City Council, said: “It was refreshing to see how the University students interpreted our Keep It Clean campaign and put their own creative stamp onto it!
“The council has a particular problem with incidents of fly-tipping and excess rubbish being discarded in back lanes at the end of term times; and having a student’s perspective on how key messages may be communicated to a particular group of people in the local community is very useful to our council teams on the ground and in a public relations capacity.”
Chris Hall, Programme Leader, BSC (Hons) Communication and Public Relations course at Northumbria University, said: “The feedback on the project has been overwhelmingly positive. Students really enjoyed it, as it brought together the various ‘strands’ of their course, and gave them valuable real-life PR experience.
“They [the students] learn to consider how to target various different audiences and stakeholders, putting the theory they learn elsewhere on the course into practice. The Project is designed to allow students to showcase their creativity; both in the execution of their strategy and in the design documents that accompany it. As the Project is an individual one, students learn to take an independent and self-managed approach to their work, although they are supported by staff along the way.”
The majority of students who study on the University’s BSC (Hons) Communication and Public Relations course go straight into employment; although some people do advance their studies by moving on to a Master’s degree. There are job opportunities in the North East; but many go to London, and the course has graduates working in PR all over the world.
Further details can be found about the City Council’s Keep it Clean campaign by visiting the official websitewww.newcastle.gov.uk/
Also for more details about studying Communications and Public Relations at Northumbria, visitwww.northumbria.ac.uk/about-