A good campaign is one that uses the minimum amount of effort and resources to achieve your desired outcome. For this to happen, your campaign needs to be planned well. This means taking some time to analyse the issue and make plans before you can act and have an impact.
Helen Wood, President at University of Kent Students’ Union explains how they used effective campaign planning to build momentum and interest in the issue, “We started the campaign in welcome week where we had a stall at our fresher’s fayres (these covered two days). At the stalls we were signing people up for the demo and getting students to sign the protest post cards. This worked really well and started the campaign with the right tone. Students where seeking us out to sign post cards and get signed up to the demo. For every person that we spoke to we put a balloon aside and these were used for a balloon launch later in the term. I think the idea is to campaign plan and have action points- we also had a team which had a mixture of staff and officers who were the ones that led the campaign.”
As Darryl Light, Finance and Commercial Officer at Cardiff Students’ Union provides his number one tip for new officers and campaigners “Make a plan – So important to have dates, times and locations sorted for publicity. We left getting our final banner made too late which could have been avoided with better planning.”
Ben Kinross, Student Liaison Officer at Basingstoke College of Technology Students’ Union describes that having a long lead in time to the national demo in 2010 made it easier to spread the message, “The demo was planned at National conference and whilst it was not high on our students’ agenda until October, work began much earlier. Once I got back into college in August I spoke to my manager and our Principal explaining that this would be the priority campaign for NUS this year.”
Next lesson learned: Target your communication