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Social Action and Community
Media
Existing Product Research

Case Study: CALM (campaign against living miserably)
Purpose:
The main purpose of this poster is to raise national
awareness, as it is showing a growing issue rather than
giving loads of information about it. This also challenges
dominant representations and agendas, as the typical
representation of men in media is that of the strong,
stereotypical tough guy, and this challenges that idea. There
is no political purpose to this, it isn't targeting a specific
demographic of people, rather letting everyone know about
this issue.
Changing attitudes is another purpose of this campaign, as it
challenges that attitude of the typical ‘macho man’ and
basically tells them its ok to have feelings and its fine to admit
that you are ok, without any social judgement, which is what
a lot of men face on a daily basis. Building relationships is
another one, as they hope to create a dialogue, and therefore
a relationship, between their campaign and with people who
feel like taking their lives.
The final important purpose of this is national change, as this
campaign is trying to change the average persons viewpoint
n mental health and suicide, on a national level.
Aims:
CALM is an organisation based in the UK trying to stop men
living miserably, in order to reduce the suicide rates amongst
men, which are far higher than the rate of suicide amongst
women. This posters aim is to give a shocking fact about
male suicide in order to spread awareness of the issue of
male suicide.
2Creative Media Production 2012

Techniques:
A simple, bold font has been used in order to grab the attention of any one
looking near the poster. It is easy to read an conveys the message in a simple,
efficient way.
This poster only has three colours on it, which makes the text, and in particular
the text in yellow stand out, highlighting the importance of this issue even
further. It doesn’t have any images or fancy graphics behind the text, and
therefore, the issue at hand to the attention of the person reading the poster.
The posters aesthetic tone isn't particularly shocking, as it is fairly colourful and
nice to look at, but the tone of its content is very shocking, as it gets straight
into the really heavy stuff with the yellow text.
There is good use of visual hierarchy here, with the MANDOWN at the top
being in a huge, bold font, in the same typeface as the rest of the text, which
makes it aesthetically appealing, and easy to take in.
At the bottom of the poster, there is information about who CALM are and what
they do, in a very concise format, which is what the rest of this poster is trying
to achieve.
The technique of displaying these campaign posters is very important too.
CALM put these messages on billboards, which puts the message in a public
space, normally where advertising campaigns would be for products. This will
further the awareness of the public on this issue, making sure that it is well
known throughout all of society, and not just men. 3

Impact: the graphic below shows the suicide rates for both males and
females in the UK. You can see the suicide rate is very slowly decreasing
in comparison to the female rate, and in particular after 2011, when the
CALM organisation as first started. You can see when the impact of the
CALM organisation comes into played, after the massive drop after 2011.
This shows us that these organisations and campaigns do work, but thy
need to be long campaigns in order for awareness for the issue to
consistently be there, as you can see from the plateauing of the line a little
bit after the initial drop.
4

Case Study: Change 4 Life
Purpose: The Change 4 Life campaign is one of
the biggest health campaigns ever to run in the
country. Its purpose is to raise awareness and
provide information on how to live a healthier and
happier lifestyle. This poster in particular is looking
to provide information on how to make your diet a
little bit healthier, with examples of different ways to
do so. This also challenges dominant
representations and agendas, as most advertising
that you see for food, tends to be fast food such as
McDonalds or for drinks such as Red Bull, and
Change 4 Life really challenges that as it is
something that you very rarely see around, whether
that be on billboards or on the television. This is
also trying to build a relationship with their
audience, by again creating a dialogue. National
change is another purpose of this, as they are
trying to provide information and life changing
changes to a vast amount of people.
Aims: this posters aim is to educate and inform
people on how to make their diet a little bit better,
so that they can try and live a healthier lifestyle,
and therefore, live longer. It provides people with
the thought and encouragement to live healthier
without doing it aggressively, and this sis done by
using bright colours and nice, jolly graphics (and
animations for the TV ads).

Techniques:
A simple, easy to read font has been used for the titles in order for the
words to stand out, so that the audience an read it. Although the colour
scheme could have been a bit better, as the red against yellow looks a bit
bad, and when you look at the smaller text, it is a bit more difficult to read,
say in comparison to to the last one where the text both stands out an is
easy to read.
There is decent use of visual hierarchy here with the text, as the top title
stands out well and so do the smaller subtitles. The logos at the bottom
could be a bit smaller, as they do draw a lot of attention as they are really
colourful and interesting to the eye, so they end up being the first thing
that you look at. This takes the attention way from the information given,
so the whole point of the poster is pretty much cancelled out by the logos
at the bottom.
The tone of the poster of isn't particularly aggressive, as the whole
‘healthy eating’ message is difficult to get across, as you don’t wan to
sound too aggressive, or too patronising, so you have to kind of go down
the educational route. This pretty much never works, as the problem isn't
that people do not know that they are eating unhealthily, they either cant
afford, or don’t care about being healthy.
There isn't really much else to talk about in terms of techniques, as there
are only a couple used here. In my opinion, this is an awful poster, both in
terms of its aesthetic quality and its actual content, as it doesn’t really
contain information, it just kind of tells people what to do instead. 6
Case Study:

Impact:
These campaigns have had little to no impact on the obesity and overall
health of the general public both adults and children, as childhood and
adult obesity has risen in the past thirty years or so.
You could argue that these aren't relevant, as the actual goals of the
Change 4 Life organisation, as stated by them, is simply to reach families
and mothers with children under a certain age. Whilst these things arent
directly connected, you can argue that the Change 4 Life campaign is a
total waste of time and money, as the obesity rate has actually gotten
worse since the campaign first started running.
7

Case Study: Superfest
Purpose: The main purpose of this is to create that
access to media production for non-traditional, in
this case, disabled groups of people, as normally
they wouldn’t have the access to film festivals. This
access also leads into building relationship
purpose, where the company is building a
relationship wit this disabled creators in order to
give them opportunities in the industry which
without them, would be very difficult for them to get.
This also leads into them infiltrating the mainstream
media, as these sort of events are set up in order
for these types of people to get a chance at
showcasing their work, and hopefully get some
recognition by festivals such as Aesthetica and
even the bigger ones like Sun Dance. Another
purpose is to challenge dominant representations
and agendas, as you very rarely see disabled
people represented at all, and if you do, it tends to
be in quite a disrespectful way. This also is
providing information on this film festival, as it is
more of an advertisement than a social action
campaign.
Aims: the main aim of this is to let disabled film
makers know that this event is running, and provide
them with information on when and where it is.

Techniques:
A simple and clear font has been used at the top of the page in order for
the title to be clear and easy to read by the audience. It tells you what the
rest of the poster will be about whilst at the same time fitting the aesthetic
of it. There is good use of visual hierarchy here to, as the typeface
remains the same whilst the character aspects change.
The graphic in the middle is a good image to show you what the event will
be about without pulling too much attention away from the rest of the
poster.
There are no shock factor sort of techniques here, as seen in the first
case study, as this is more of an advertisement flyer for an event. There is
a lot of information here, at the bottom is tells all you need to know abut
the event.
9

Impact:
It speaks volumes about the impact of Superfest, that it is so difficult to find
any statistics or even articles about disabled film makers in the
mainstream film industry. This problem seems to be with the portrayal of
disabled characters on screen, as they are consistently being portrayed as
lesser people, or a burden on others, for example, with the BBCs portrayal
of an autistic child and the impact on his family (impact here really means
burden)
It also takes a short look on Youtube to see how little content there is
showcased from fil makers with disabilities.
Superfest is the longest running disability film festival in the world, and in
20178 they received over 160 submissions, which is their highest ever
number. It also tells us how popular it is by the fact that it sells out every
year.
10

Male suicide in UK
Have 3 men standing next to each other smiling, then have text above them saying “1
in 3 men have considered suicide, can you tell which one?’, then have text
underneath tem saying, ‘you cant always tell until its to late’ with a suicide hotline or
something along those lines to help.

Workplace deaths/accidents
This is one specifically aimed at the men who are working in dangerous jobs, such as
window cleaners and builders. This will with have a graphic of a man falling off a ladder.
Then there will be text on it saying something like, ‘it takes years to build a career, and to
lose one.’
There aren't really any example of campaigns for male workplace deaths, as it isn't a
widely known issue.

Homelessness in the UK
This is an issue that for me, requires a certain level of shock value in order to create
awareness and impact, as often homeless people go unnoticed or ignored on the street.
A lot of the campaigns trying to help homeless people use this.
For this I would do something like the example down below, just have some shocking
fact with a blank background, as this is a pretty unconventional thing to see, so it grabs
your attention.

Drug abuse
• Drug abuse is generally seen as a crime, and drug users have a very
criminal image in the public eye. I would like this to change. I think that drug
abuse and addiction should be seen as a medical condition, just as
alcoholism is, as people are more likely to get help if they are treated like a
patient rather than a criminal. The example below would be something that I
want to avoid, as it is very aggressive and makes the subject seem like a
criminal, as it is very reminiscent of a mug shot.

CALM-Product/Client Research
• CALM is an organisation that deals with the issue of suicide
amongst men under 45 in the UK. They launched in 2011 in London,
and are funded by donations from the public. The money is mostly
spent on their helpline and their webchat, but also on the social
action campaigns that they run, including billboards and even a
magazine.

Analysis
• All of the campaigns from CALM have a similar aesthetic. They are all bold
and eye-catching, and they haven't needed to use any graphic or fancy
fonts, as they have done visual hierarchy really well, so you immediately
look at the intended place, which is the word at the top. These words don't
really make sense until you give them context, so it makes you read the text
below, which gives the definition and therefore the context. This is a pretty
simple yet genius way of getting you to read the entire poster. The colours
used here also add to this, as there is nothing going on behind the text it
makes it stand out a lot more. The placement of the logo is important here
too, as with social action campaigns it is more about the message than the
company sending it, so the logo is normally out of the way. Here it is quite
large but still doesn’t take any attention away from the message because of
the great use of visual hierarchy, which means that it is easy to see who the
campaign is run by, but at the same time it doesn’t take up all of your
attention and take away from the message of the campaign. The purpose of
this poster is to raise awareness and educate the public about this issue.
Also as they are all similar, it builds a continuity and therefore a relationship
with the audience that they are targeting.

Billboard Campaigns
• Their billboard campaigns are the main way that they are tackling this issue.
These Billboards are in a very busy public places in order for a lot of people
to se them, to raise awareness for the issue and the company themselves.
These billboards are all designed in a similar way, which creates a
continuity for the brand and for the issue, as people may see them twice
and may recognise them from the last time that they saw a billboard. This
one is outside the printworks in Manchester, which is an incredibly busy
place, so a lot of people will see it. Again with this piece, the big text only
really makes sense once you read the smaller text which gives it context,
which is a genius way of keeping peoples attention.

Not only do CALM do social action campaigns, they also write a magazine called the
CALMzine, which is a magazine aimed at men. It contains all of the typical manly man
stuff like football and cars, but it also challenges this with loads of articles about mental
health and challenging the typical ‘masculine’ image that men are pressured into taking.
This is a really well designed magazine, featuring plenty of interviews an appearances
from various celebrities, for example, the last issue has an interview Danny Boyle.

CALM X Topman
CALM worked with UK mens fashion specialist Topman and Love Island star Chris Hughes to create a
campaign called ‘Don’t Bottle It Up’. This was a campaign aimed at men in the UK to encourage them to not
bottle up their feelings and talk about them. The advert had one of Hughes tears falling into a bottle of water,
branded ‘L’EAU DE CHRIS’. This was for a supposed Topman X Chris Hughes water collaboration where the
water was supposed to be infused with one of Hughes’ tears. The media, including tabloids such as the Sun
(obviously) were quick to mock both Topman and Hughes for the product idea. The next day at the products
launch event, Hughes explained that he had teamed up with Topman and CALM to launch #DontBottleItUp.
This campaign coincided with World Mental Health day, and the press quickly did a 180 and started to praise
Hughes.
This is a great example of a campaign that gained a lot of attention, as the media put it in plain view of a load
of people, and then they explained what it was about the next day and gave it context.

The Effect
• Unfortunately, the CALM campaigns that started in
2011 did not have any effect at all on the suicide rate.
In fact, the suicide rate rose significantly in 2011, with
an increase of 437 people from the previous year. The
highest suicide rate for 2011 was for men aged
between 30 and 44, which is part of CALMs targeted
audience.
• The amount of men that took their lives in comparison
to women was particularly shocking this year. Around
6000 people killed themselves in the UK in 2011, 1500
of them being female, which means that the male
suicide rate was 4 times higher this year, compared to
the normal 3 times higher.

Research
• For research I made a survey asking various
questions about the topic of male suicide. These range
from impersonal questions such as ‘What do you think
is the single biggest cause of death for men aged
under 45 in the UK?’ to very personal questions such
as ‘Have you ever considered suicide?’.
• From this survey, I got 307 responses, but 207 of
those are useless any way as I cannot see their
answers.
• The responses, which I will analyse and evaluate in
the following slides, tend to be almost unanimous
answers for one of the available options.

Questions 1- What is your gender?
This is one of the least surprising results that I got form this survey, as I mainly got my
results from Reddit, which has a mostly male user base. Another reason why this isn't
particularly surprising as ‘male suicide’ is in the title, which may cause women to think
that this survey isn't for them.
Even though it isn't surprising that there are more male than female answers, 20% is
still a large chunk of the answers. I will keep his in mind when coming up with the ideas
for my campaign, as it could useful to make a separate campaign for women, about
male mental health and suicide, as they could be a good support network for the issue.

Question 2 What is your age?
Again, with Reddit being my main source of answers, this isn't surprising, as it has a
fairly young user base. The results show that the people answering this question are the
people who this issue affects the most, and you can really start to see this wen you
apply the male filter to the questions, as you can see the bulk of the answers can from
18-30 year old males, which could mean that they are the people who are most likely to
be interested in this issue, or that they are the ones that are the most affected.
With male filterUnfitered

Question 3- have you ever considered suicide?
With female filter With male filter
From my searching's, I have found statistics such as ‘1 in 3 men have considered
suicide’. So I was rather surprised when these answers came in, as it proves otherwise,
and it proves that it is actually very common for people to consider suicide. Judging by
these answers, and the fact that they are so similar for the two genders, the problem
doesn't lie with the idea of suicide, it is more about the support, as something must be
different from the initial thought to the actual act of suicide for men, as opposed to
women. This is useful for my campaign as it tell me that I need to focus on the ‘getting
help’ part rather than just talking about the idea of suicide.

Question 4- Do you think men are
pressured into acting masculine?
Unfiltered With male filter
Again these results are very similar when you filter out the female answers. This shows
that people know that there are particular social pressures on men in our society, but it
does not gives any help in starting to fix them. Maybe if I made the next question about
how to fix these issues, maybe I could have used that angle for my campaign, and fix
the issue of male image and mental health, having a sort of domino effect on helping
with the suicide issue, as men wont have mental health issues such as depression and
inadequacy to begin with.

Question 4- Qualitative data from a
male
This is a fantastic opportunity to get a rare perspective on the issue, by having a
transgender man give his opinion. This opinion supports the general idea that men have
to suppress their emotions and hide the fact that they are not okay, rather than seeking
the help and support that they need, as it is seen as a weak move. It is interesting to see
this from trans man, as they feel this pressure even more, and it is almost that they have
to work harder at being masculine because it isn't natural or drilled into them as it is with
a lot of boys who are born male.

Question 4- Qualitative data from a
female
This is one of the answers that I got from a female who did the survey. It is an
interesting answer as it gives a supporting and an opposing opinion for the question.
Here she has basically said it can be a good thing, as men do have a role to play in
terms of family, and often following this stereotype of the man can lead to living a
good, happy life. She has said though that men enjoy this when they CHOOSE to live
like this, and it is just how they are, as opposed into feeling forced into this personality
that isn't really your own, which as lot of men feel pressured into. This is where she
has said the problems come from, as when boys feel like you have to conform to this
stereotype, and there is no other way to live other than being a macho manly man.

Question 5- What do you think is the single biggest
cause of death for men aged under 45 in the UK?
With male filterUnfiltered
Again here is another example of the answers being pretty much identical when you filter out the female answers.
I think that if it weren't so obvious that the questionnaire was about male suicide, for example if it weren't in the
title and this question was the first one, rather than following ones about suicide specifically, I think that the results
would be a lot different. This is why I think that the data here isn't very useful, as I have lead them onto the subject
of male suicide, so they are already thinking about it before this question, leading to it being a clue for this answer.
Regardless of this problem, the answer for suicide is still by far the most popular one, which does prove that this is
a well known issue. It also gives us an indication that, whilst it is a well known issue, it is consistently being
ignored, as the suicide rates increase each year, and this is shown in one of the later answers.

Questions 6-8
With these three questions, as they are all similar, we really start to see the fact that this is a relatively ignored
issue. If you consider what people answered in the previous section, it is not the awareness of the issue that is the
problem, it is more about the support and the help that men receive when the feel suicidal.
This is one of the qualitative answers that I have collected from question 6. This supports my analysis from
this slide, that the problem doesn't lie with the awareness of the issue, it is more about the action and the
support for the people suffering from it. Knowing this, I will make the campaign more about the support rather
than the actual problem itself.
Q6- Male filtered on top and no filter on
bottom Q7- female filtered on top and male on
bottom
Q8 (unfiltered)

Question 6- Qualitative data
Question 8- Qualitative data
This is one of the qualitative answers that I have collected from question 6. This supports my analysis from
this slide, that the problem doesn't lie with the awareness of the issue, it is more about the action and the
support for the people suffering from it. Knowing this, I will make the campaign more about the support rather
than the actual problem itself.
This piece of qualitative data supports my view and the views of the people who have answered this survey,
that there should be more available support in place, whether than be official (NHS) or just improved
stigmas and support through people.
This is an unexpected answer, which disagrees with the narrative and general consensus that can be taken
from the answers given throughout the previous questions. This person makes an extremely good and valid
point, and I shouldn't just ignore because it doesn’t fit my personal agenda or my plans for my campaign.

Question 9- What would you say is the male suicide rate in
comparison to the female suicide rate?
This is an anomaly compared to the questions before this, as the most popular answer
for the questions beforehand have all won be huge margins, for example with question
2, 91% of people said yes to the first option. With this question, it is a little more
ambiguous. In my opinion, this is because people are aware of the fact that suicide is
an issue, but they are not aware just how massive the numbers are for male suicides in
comparison to female ones.
Maybe this could be an angle to go with for the campaign, not just making people
aware of the issue but make people know just how much worse it is than they think.

Question 10- Do you think suicide hotlines work?
This is another one which doesn’t have a clear winner, and I think that this is because
its a topic that doesn’t really get discussed when it comes to issues such as suicide,
does it actually work or help people? I think that people just don’t know, which is the
general consensus from the ‘please explain section that I have added underneath it,
as a lot of people would find it difficult to talk to someone once they are at that stage
of wanting to end things.

Question 10- qualitative data
Here are three answers that I have collected form this question. I have not analised
one at a time here like I have done on previous slides as the general answers for
this question aren't black and white like the last ones have, rather a mixed bag of
‘yes, no and unsures’
These are just three example of an answer that supports the question, an answer
that doesn’t and finally an answer that is unsure. Most of the answers were unsure,
and I could have put that as a tick box in hindsight.

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