The Challenge.

To develop and implement a marketing communications campaign across the North West region that would raise awareness and encourage a take-up of Basic Skills courses. The region covers Cheshire & Warrington, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Greater Merseyside and Cumbria.

The Solution.

The approach was based on creative concepts featuring ludicrous interpretations of
errors with spelling and numeracy. One example shows a man looking forlornly up
at a hare sitting on his head, accompanied by the question: "Do you wear a harepiece
or a hairpiece?"

The concepts were intended to add a bit of humour to a pretty serious topic and therefore encourage people to come forward and improve their basic skills.

The campaign has taken the form of 2.5 million mailers, over 150 48-sheet posters, over half a million beermats, 500 toilet panels, postcards at over 100 venues and a 5 week radio campaign across the region.

The Results.

Response is still being monitored but some initial focus group research shows that the campaign has increased awareness amongst the target audience and increased the demand for literacy, language and numeracy courses. It's also pleasing that we recommended and used humour as the key driver behind the creative concepts
and it was humour that was most liked by the research sample.

Joint Managing Director Mark Lesniak commented: "We believe that being gently humorous is the best way to reach our target audiences so we were pretty confident that the campaign would be effective and engaging. If that proves to be the case, it's pleasing to think that our work might encourage people to improve their quality of life."