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Hebburn Heroes win CTSI Create a Campaign Competition
Posted 02/07/15
Year 10 students at Hebburn Comprehensive School were today (Thursday 2 July) crowned national winners of brief 1 of CTSI’s Create a Campaign competition for their underage smoking and drinking awareness campaign aimed at their peers and other young people.
The team of 10 students received a certificate and a £1000 prize, sponsored by Waitrose, for their school. The Hebburn Heroes were commended for their strong campaign title ‘Your life. Your future. Your choice’ which the judging panel felt would resonate with young people. Judges were also impressed with the team’s realistic ‘good choices’ versus ‘bad choices’ video and accompanying report which detailed how they would roll out the campaign in their local area.
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 across England, Wales and Scotland.
Mrs Claire Moore, who supervised the project at Hebburn said: "The pupils really wanted to make something that mattered; they never thought for a single second they would win. We are all excited and delighted to win such an amazing prize. The pupils are thinking hard about what they can use the money for as they want to do something for the school that will have a long-term impact for all pupils. I am lucky to work with such a talented and brilliant bunch."
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.”
The 5th Tilehurst Guides of Reading were also crowned winners of brief 2 for their ‘Responsible Retailer Award’ aimed at local businesses and received £1000 for their youth group.
- 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.'
