We recently chatted with Dave Deluca about his new role as Head of Campaigns for DoSomething, how to motivate teens to get involved, keep campaigns fun, and how organizations can spark the interest of teens. Among his key goals are listening to teens about what matters to them, being in the same space as them, and growing conversations and relationships.
Ypulse: Head of Campaigns is a new role at DoSomething — what does the job encompass?
Dave Deluca: I oversee the team responsible for creating campaigns. I focus on the overall strategy of what campaigns to run and how to expand our campaign calendar. We’re about to nearly double our number of campaigns this year on a variety of issues, repeating a few campaigns and trying to come up with ways to address other topics we’re hearing about. We have a campaign called Thumb Wars around texting and driving. It’s a vital issue right now; teens are more likely than any other group to get into an accident because of distracted driving. It’s a fun and social campaign — the can sign up to get a pair of thumb socks that they can share with friends and take pictures of, so it’s a fun way of spreading the message about texting and driving.
YP: That’s so hilarious!
DD: We think it’s important that doing good can be fun. Especially with campaigns around distracting driving; a lot of adults who run these campaigns go to scare tactics because they feel that’s what’s effective, but it’s hard to use that to create behavior change. People can reject or shy away from the message. We wanted to look at the issue but have a little fun with it so teens are being drawn into the issue and not going away from it.
YP: Let’s talk a bit about how you motivate teens to get interested in a campaign and then to get involved.
DD: We mirror our campaigns to reflect what teens are into and how they want to engage with us. It’s important to make sure you listen to what they want. We have two data analysts that I work closely with on little projects like following how teens click through our site to see what draws them to bigger projects like the heat map of the country created during our Teens For Jeans campaign to show where we had the most involvement. Now, coming up on our Prom For All campaign, which is a dress donation drive, we can use that heat map to concentrate our efforts where we have the most population. It’s not hard to amass data, but what you really need is smart people to filter that data and interpret it into the voice of your audience, helping you recognize what data is most important for your goals and most representative of what your audience thinks.
YP: You use a lot of technology in your campaigns, like your upcoming effort tying in to the movie “Bullyâ€â€¦
DD: We’re really excited about that campaign. It’s a classic example of how we use technology — there’s a Facebook app and a strong mobile component — to interact and have a conversation with teens, and then broadcast their voices out. We’re going to help tell the world what they think about bullying; not what an academic thinks or what a teacher thinks.
YP: Looking at the recent viral campaign Kony 2012, how do you capitalize on moments when there’s that spark that gets a teen interested and use that to get them more involved in a campaign?
DD: Separate from the controversy, and looking at why that video sparked with people, there are a few things to tease out that are relevant for all organizations. First, the video is very concrete; he makes the issue of child soldiers very concrete for viewers. Second, the video is very audience focused. It makes the viewer feel very empowered and part of a group; that they can make a change and have an impact. In terms of how things spark, those are two vital elements. You have to have something very concrete and tangible that people can grab on to, and then make sure that people feel they can actually make a difference — and that they can do it in their current means. At DoSomething, we work very hard at that, to make the issue or the cause very real, to relate it to teens, and then also making sure the action they need to take is one simple action, like donating a pair of jeans.
YP: How do you continue to motivate the current members you have, the ones who have been involved for years, around continuing campaigns? How do you remind them that a cause still needs their attention?
DD: There are a few ways to keep things fresh. At the end of every campaign, we ask ourselves, “How can we make this bigger and better?†to make sure that the experience is even more than it was the year before and finding new ways for them to engage with the cause. We have a recycling campaign right now that’s about sharing memes of Ryan Gosling and LOL cats to make that issue more relevant. The key is to follow where our audience goes and to make sure the cause is in that space. And it’s about having a conversation with them — we don’t broadcast to their phones via text message, we text to engage and have a conversation with them. For example, with Teens For Jeans, we revealed our final donation number by first asking them how many they thought were donated, and got a ton of responses before we sent them the actual number. It’s a relationship.
YP: We’ve noticed that kids who get involved in a campaign often do so because they feel it touch their lives personally. How do you take a cause that is very national — or international — in scope, and help members see the effect of their efforts on their own local communities?
DD: One way to do that is to make sure that when you communicate with them that you show how it’s relevant to their lives. It’s also important to show impact. We make sure to feature photos from teens who do collections or run drives. We’re going to be adding a counter to our website to show how many teens are taking action or how many jeans have been donated, always making sure to feed back the impact to teens so that it feels very personal to them.
