Позитивные изменения. Том 1, №1 (2021). Positive changes. Volume 1, Issue 1 (2021)

NEW FACETS OF ACTIVITY

The familiar scheme for evaluating performance in the social sphere is the economic efficiency or costs (fund spending) and effectiveness (the degree of goal achievement). For this purpose the immediate results (coverage of charity recipients who received a social service, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the activities implemented), as well as results at the level of social impact (changes in the charity recipients’ lives, communities and society as a whole) are evaluated. The former, as a rule, are correlated with the project objectives, and the latter — with the project’s goals or mission.

As for the media coverage of social projects there no systematic approach is used as a rule. Large corporate foundations and NGOs that regularly advertise in the media and have extensive experience in this field order mostly a campaign analysis (post-campaign) to media agencies. Other organizations usually analyze their media coverage spontaneously, from time to time. But almost no one considers working with the media as a tool for long-term social impact.

«Leaders of social change projects rarely consider media coverage of their projects as something important and often do not recognize the important contribution they make to the shaping and change of the social agenda, — voices her view Natalia Gladkikh, Candidate of Sciences in Psychology, senior expert of the Institute of Socio-Economic Design of the Higher School of Economics. — Meanwhile, it may turn out that the role of the social project in shaping public opinion, in changing people’s attitudes and even their behavior through media broadcasted information about the problem and beneficiaries of the project, etc., was more significant than other activities directly implemented under this project."

Thus, it is high time that the third sector and other social change sphere participants had wider views regarding the media involvement and assessment of their media coverage. It is not simply a tool for presenting the work results or for raising funds, but also a resource for changing society's attitude towards social problems.

PLANNING APPROACH

Turning to TV, the press, radio, online media for advertising, fundraising or information coverage, organizations can always ask media to clarify their audience profile. Even if media is not monitored by specialized industry research (TV Index, Web Index, National Readership Survey (Press), Radio Index from Mediascope), it can still provide a media kit that will describe the socio-demographic profile, circulation/coverage and other important data. Thus, organizations will be able to plan who they are addressing, choose the tone or topic that will be promising to discuss.

In general, when planning advertising or PR campaign, it is important to go through several stages:

• Formulate goals and objectives of the campaign (fundraising, raising awareness about the foundation, etc.). At the same stage, it is immediately necessary to think about the goal of social impact through the media and ways to measure it.

• Determine the target audience to which you would like to appeal.

• Plan the information campaign: choose media, tools and formats.

• Purchase or, in the case of a social topic, book more frequent advertising time (TV and radio), ads space (press), surfaces (outdoor advertising) or traffic, or prepare a list of priority media as potential partners.

• Planning a model for reporting the campaign effectiveness is another very important stage (how many actually there were broadcasts, whether advertising/information messages were released everywhere, how many people were 'covered' by the campaign, and how often they saw advertisement/information, and then — what changes have been made in the sphere of perceptions, attitudes and behaviors, lifestyle and society as a whole). Most of the modern media analysis tools allow you to evaluate the volume of media coverage of a social project (audience coverage and costs). But there are ways to evaluate, at least indirectly, the change in the society attitude, the society's reaction to various topics and problems.

WAYS TO MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION CAMPAIGNS IN VARIOUS MEDIA

Advertising placement on federal and many regional channels is mostly possible through specialized agencies, that should be requested a ‘TV post-campaign’ evaluation. It is done on the basis of TV monitoring data analysis (TV–Index from Mediascope Company). This system helps to evaluate the following: foundations and NGOs TV advertising volume (in monetary and quantitative terms), the placement structure (on which channel, in which program, at what time the advertisement was released), as well as how many people were covered by the advertising campaign.