Brief
Cultural note. The original title “Verdens Likeste Land” is a twist of “Verdens Rikeste Land” (The World’s Richest Country) a common expression in Norway to describe how well put the country is.
Civita is a liberal think tank independent of all political parties, organized interests, and public authorities. It is dedicated to exploring and strengthen the understanding and support of liberal ideas, institutions, and policies to promote a society based on the principles of individual freedom, the rule of law, freedom of speech and personal responsibility. But to ensure their importance for the future it is always a need to reach new and younger audiences.
Approaching the Norwegian Election, Civita wanted to use the increased focus and interest for political topics and debate to increase understanding and reflections about their thoughts and ideas of the liberal democracy. Enabling more people to do well informed choices between liberal and authoritarian politics, especially when it comes to free enterprise and personal freedom, understanding why the market economy is crucial driving force, and the link between democracy and the market economy.
The main target group was defined as 18- to 30-year-olds. And to increase the hit rate the group was narrowed down to an audience interested in society and politics.
Civita has a great team of economists, philosophers, historians, political scientists, and fellows contribute to the public debate. But this is also a challenge; Academics tend to be… well, academic. Which is not always the best way to attract new, young audiences.
Solution
The solution was to engage young audiences on their own terms and channels; Edutainment in social media. Facts, figures and arguments presented with intensity and graphics at high speed. At the same time we wanted to increase Civita’s credibility. So, the work began to identify which topics that matters the most in the target group’s lives that would also be central issues for in the election campaigns. We chose; Climate change, Housing, Entrepreneurship, Work and Employment, Education, and the most overarching ideological topic of all – Freedom and Equality. The latter leading to the campaign title and narrative “the World’s Most Equal Country”. To many Norway is known to be “the richest country in the world”. Surprisingly, it is also the most equal.
The topics were the basis of 6 films where a reflected representative person from the target audience address different nuances of the different topics. It was very important for the credibility that the content, information, and answers are proven facts that can be backtracked. A lot of effort was put into the language to make it clear, understandable, and with a minimum of academic expressions.
The visual universe was developed to give a unique look but also to carry the load of information in a way that kept the momentum and engagement. This also created great freedom to cut down to snippets, and more basic ads to ensure recognition and visibility. All levels lived on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. All elements lead to the campaign website where you could find even more information connected to the topics.
Results
For Civita, as a think tank, the goal was not to prove that their ideas are the only answer. Any new person reflecting on the liberal ideas, topics and making up their own mind is considered a success. Because, just like Plato said and the films end line say: the best decisions are made on knowledge.
And numbers show that it was a successful campaign:
The campaign aimed to reach completely new target groups with Civita’s ideas. The choice to angle the topic relevant to the target group of 18-34-year-olds has resulted in almost 13 million views of campaign content and almost 2 million video plays. Considering that the Norwegian population is only 5,4 million, and the target group is 1/5th of that, the campaign got very well noticed.
Before we started the campaign, Civitas’ YouTube channel had a total of 54,878 views on 83 videos. The six campaign videos alone have received 199,147 views on YouTube alone. In total on all channels, the campaign videos in the World’s Equal Countries have an average of 327,902 views per video.
Civita wanted to double weekly reach (unique people reached) during the campaign period of four weeks. Their average before this campaign was 250,000 people reached weekly. During the campaign period, we have reached an average of 656,147 unique people a week.
The videos and ads overall did not spark a lot of discussion but aimed to be informative content that received a lot of engagement on social media. For example, over 80% of those who have seen the campaign films also liked them (compared to Civita’s average of just over 60%). This may indicate that the distribution, message, and visuals was well received by the target group.
We used the age groups 18-24 and 25-34 in the segmentation. Most people who have seen the ads are women between the ages of 18-24. And many in the segment has even watched the films several times.
