A low-carbon lifestyle can be understood as a life of low carbon-dioxide emission, low energy, and low consumption. It is of great importance to make possible changes in one’s lifestyle and consumption habit to reduce global carbon dioxide emission. “Low-carbon lifestyle” saves energy and is beneficial to reduce the speed of global warming and environment degradation. Therefore, we must act now. Reducing carbon dioxide emission, choosing to live a “low-carbon” life is an obligation that every citizen should fulfill.
Conveyed messages
Carbon emissions make life a lot worse
Large amount of carbon emissions not only contribute to global warming, they also create an serious crisis to human life. Some experts indicated that due to the rising of temperatures, dehydration cases increased. By 2050, there would be 220 million new patients with kidney stones. At the same time, reproduction of mosquitoes and plankton will on the rise, which will greatly increase the danger of outbreaks of dengue fever, malaria and encephalitis, etc..( Life newspaper, 2009)
Sources of carbon emissions in life
Convenience constitutes part of marketing and consumption values of today, but it comes at the high cost of energy consumption. For example, while open-type freezers in supermarkets provide convenience to customers, their energy consumption are 20% higher than the average freezers; while people enjoy the convenience of private cars, they overlook the fact that each car emits an additional 2.7 tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year (based on the 1.6L-displacement model).).(Chinese insurance newspaper, 2009)
Low-carbon makes life better
To reduce carbon emissions now seems inevitable. It will be a tremendous achievement in this generation and one feat that will also benefit future generations. Low-carbon life will create a better future for mankind.
Build a low-carbon life starting from ourselves
It’s actually quite easy to reduce carbon emissions. Simple measures such as saving power and water, using more public transportation and planting trees are among the things we are capable of doing. By taking simple measures, we can start from changing our lives to build a low-carbon society.
Target Audience
To promote the concept of environmental protection belong to public service advertising. Such promotion takes a long time to exert a far-reaching impact so we have to look farther into the future and we should not expect the situation could be changed overnight. We decide to target at the children between the ages of 6-16 and the following are our reasons.
To begin with, children and the young people are the future pillars of the country. To invest in them is to invest in the country’s own future (Meaningful). The concept of low-carbon life will only transform into reality through the continuous efforts of human beings.
Secondly, the children are like a piece of blank paper so they are more readily to accept new concepts when their values have not yet formed (accessible). To infuse the concept of low-carbon life to their minds at this stage will have an impact in their whole life. It is also a way of maximizing the effectiveness of advertising and reducing investment cost.
Thirdly, children and the young people are a very special group that is easily distinguishable from other social groups (Distinguishable). Therefore, by catering to their unique characteristics, it is easier to adopt corresponding strategies in promoting low-carbon life (such as using cartoon characters as advertising images).
Media Planning
Objectives
We hope to stamp the concept of low-carbon life further into the minds of children and young people. We want them to realize from the bottom of their hearts that low-carbon is closely related to their life. We should let them understand that low-carbon is a way of changing environment for the better, teach them to reduce carbon emissions and guide them to build a low-carbon life bit by bit.
Strategy
We will try to influence the behavior of our target audience from the following four steps.
Understanding the graveness of problem – Identifying the sources of the problem – Learning how to reduce emissions – Accepting and Action
First, publicize how carbon emissions have affected and endangered our life in order to attract the attention of our target audience (Attention).
And then go on to tell our audience that the sources of such emission – that the emission comes from their surroundings (Interpretation).
After explanation, the target audience will make their assessments and respond to our campaign. This is when we tell them what measures to take to reduce carbon emission.
Finally, the concept of low-carbon life will be deeply rooted in people’s minds and our target audience will accept such concept and take actions (accepting & action).
Tactics
We will choose two kinds of media to carry out our campaign – TV and posters. TV channels are the basic tool to carry out advert in cartoon to attract the audiences. In fact, the campaign are based on one belief which is young people are easily to imitate idols no matter they are real or invented. Therefore, a cartoon character can be created properly for the advert. Then, TV channels are considered to be the best vehicle to introduce the cartoon design and impress the audience. There are 3 main reasons to choose TV as the core part of advert plan:
- TV is the most popular media which can provide dynamic visual experience;
- TV programes is welcomed by children who may not handle internet;
- TV is matured mass media which is considered to be reliable.
Besides TV, poster is the supplementary approach which we decide to support TV adverts. The advantages of a combined plan might be clear. Firstly, posters, as a convenient method to communicate with the audience, is cheap and widely applied. Posters are easy to be spreaded, in fact, their low price and portability allow them to appear nearly every places. Secondly, their flexibility allows the designer to replenish the gap of single media. Secondly, a proper location of posters can result in more efficient outcomes. All in all, the advert of carbon footprint will be divide into two parts which are a series of cartoon and a animation style poster.
TV advert campaign
The TV spot advert is the main component which could make the whole plan startup. To achieve our goal and inform the audience, a piece of slogan is needed to declare our stance and illustrate basic ideas. A good slogan should, on one hand, briefly cover the thesis of the advert; and on the other hand, it should have eye-catching structure or content. Our slogan is "Yes, we can", which is from stumping speech of Barack Obama, the President of the united states. It is designed to image the audience two pieces of messages:
- reducing carbon footprint is not the "mission impossible";
- and reducing carbon footprint is equally important as saving the world.
These two messages would come out with a cartoon superhero named "Captain Earth" and a series of short adverts about how he fight against greenhouse gases, which is the evil forces. In the TV advert, the gases, such as carbon dioxide, will be personified as twisted element which is angry with human activities; and the "Captain Earth" is incarnation of the planet who try to keep the equilibrium and look for Coexistence way.
To attract the target audience, media vehicles should be strictly defined. At the first place, the time frame of adverts should be designed for young people. It is recommended to place the advert along with programs for children and teenagers. Secondly, the vehicle, based on a scheduled time frame. According to Television-Info(2011), the overall audience share is shown in the table 1.
Table 1. Audience share in the UK
Considering BBC channels are not allowed to carry out adverts, iTV1 may be the best choice in order to guarantee the coverage and outcomes. The X Factor, as the ace program of iTV can attractive both young people and adults. Therefore, we decide to carry on the slot advert at the breaks of X factor. The advert is 30s which is a regular length of advert.
Poster design
Posters are supposed to be an auxiliary approach to communicate with the audience. Firstly, it can enhance the image and ideas in TV advert. Secondly, the poster has broad coverage which the TV advert may not reach. To assist and improve information in TV adverts, a series of posters are needed to show the audience, especially young people, what they can do to help "Captain earth". The posters may be about daily activities which can help to reduce carbon footprint. The posters should not be too similar; in case the young people are easily to get bored.
The location of putting up the posters are also according to the target audience; schools, theme parks, toy shops and cinemas are all the places where young people would appear frequently. The graph below is a rough draft of the poster.
Control and Evaluation
Before the the advert put into use, a test trial perform is necessary. A randomly selected group of audience, in age group 7~16, will be invited to watch the advert in advance. The following questions will be ask after they finish.
- What do you think of captain earth and his wish?
- Are you for or against him?
- If you support him, what will you do to fight against the evil forces?
- What do you learn from the fragment? What you can conduct from the fragment?
- Do you want watch more like this?
Then, after put this into use, another survey will be introduced. The second one will include more questions besides the 5 question above. The additional questions is about coverage and their preferable time for TV program and the types of programs they like.
Budget
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Bibliography
UK Carbon Trust,(n.d.) .retrieved at 5th May 2010
Chinese insurance newspaper (2009). Low-carbon makes life better. , . Retrieved from http://insurance.jrj.com.cn/2009/12/ 29135967234-1.shtml retrieved at 5th May 2010
Life newspaper (2009). Low-carbon life, retrieved at 5th May 2010.
iTV, (2011). ITV Airtime Terms and Conditions. retrieved at 5th May 2010.
Television-info, (2011). uk-tv-ratings/ retrieved at 5th May 2010