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Girl Guides win CTSI Create a Campaign competition
Posted 02/07/15
Girls from the 5th Tilehurst Guides were today (Thursday 2 July) crowned national winners of ‘brief 2’ of CTSI’s Create a Campaign competition for their underage smoking and drinking awareness campaign aimed at local businesses.
The team of guides received a certificate and a £1000 prize, sponsored by Waitrose, for their youth group. The Guide’s ‘Responsible Retailer Award’ and accompanying ‘C.A.P.tain Reading’ mascot was commended for its creativity and appeal to local businesses. Judges were especially impressed with their well thought out campaign strategy and research on underage sales issues within their local area.
This is the second year running that the 5th Tilehurst Guides have been recognised at CTSI conference for their hard work and creativity. In 2014 the group were awarded a Hero award for their ‘loan shark awareness badge’.
CTSI’s ‘Create a Campaign’ competition was launched at Westminster in February by Minister for public health Jane Ellison. The initiative encouraged schools and youth groups across the UK to get creative and design campaigns aimed either at their peers or local businesses to raise awareness of the health risks associated with underage sales of tobacco and alcohol products. We received entries to the competition from schools and youth groups from across England, Wales and Scotland.
CTSI chief executive Leon Livermore said: "The ‘Create a Campaign’ competition has been a fantastic opportunity to educate young people about the damaging effects of drinking and smoking underage and the preventative work that trading standards does to tackle this issue. When it came to the final judging we were impressed with the high standard of entries and it was incredibly tough to pick just two winning entries from the shortlist. In the end though we were unanimous in agreement that our two winners produced the best campaigns in terms of their creativity and overall appeal to the target audience. Looking to the future we hope to see some of these ideas being picked up in local underage sales campaigns across the country.”
Commenting on the ‘Create a Campaign’ winners, Derek Lewis, Chair of Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP), said: “I am delighted that the 5th Tilehurst Guides have won the Chartered Institute of Trading Standards retailer tier of the competition.
Education, youth and retailer engagement are three of the core elements of a successful CAP. It is fantastic to see that the guides, in partnership with Reading CAP, have used all three of these principles to highlight the importance of responsible retailing and reducing underage alcohol consumption in the local community.”
To date, over 80 CAPs have already been set up with schemes in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and across England –with a further 20 anticipated to be launched in the coming year. Tackling underage drinking and its consequences are at the heart of everything we do and this award is a great advert for the scheme.”
Kim Jakubiszyn, Leader of 5th Tilehurst Guides said: “I was so excited when I found out that we had won this National Competition. The girls and our volunteers work so hard to raise awareness, of those sometimes difficult and challenging issues, in their communities and to other members of Girl Guiding. We wanted to teach the girls that even a small group could make a huge difference and by winning this competition it has shown that with hard work, imagination, partnership and a lot of fun, we can achieve so much. Thank you so much to Girlguiding UK, the Reading Community Alcohol Partnership and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute for this amazing opportunity and to help us to prove that #GuidesMakeInformedDecisions”
A group of year 10 students from Hebburn Comprehensive School in South Tyneside were also crowned winners of brief 1 for their ‘Your life. Your future. Your choice’ video campaign aimed at their peers and received £1000 for their school.
- Brief one was 'your job is to design a campaign targeting your peers.' 'Often young people forget the long term health risks associated with consuming alcohol or tobacco products. We therefore encourage you to incorporate this information into your design. Think about the reasons why purchasing alcohol and tobacco products under the age of 18 is illegal and consider how you might persuade your peers that the law is there for a reason and not just there to stop them from having a good time. Try not to be too negative and use your campaign as an opportunity to deliver positive messages that should encourage your peers to make informed and educated choices about the kind of social activities they really want to be involved with. Crucially, for this brief, your proposed campaign should appeal to other teenagers and, as with all good campaigns, it should be creative and capture the audience’s attention, conveying a clear and recognisable message.'
- Brief two was 'for this brief, your target audience are local businesses.' 'Your campaign should focus on the message that selling age restricted products to underage young people is not only illegal, but can have serious repercussions in terms of health and social wellbeing for your local community. Your campaign should be persuasive and encourage businesses to comply with their legal obligations to check ID if they have any doubt that someone is over 18. If you wanted you could also include the message that proxy sales, which means selling age restricted products to adults in the knowledge that they are passing them onto children, are also against the law. Indeed, proxy sales result in the same social, health and legal consequences as selling directly to the young person. For businesses you could add a positive spin on the campaign by emphasising legal compliance and community improvement as a reason to end illegal sales to young people.'
