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Team CamelApril 30, 2009Suicide-Awareness Advertising Campaign
Introduction
Implementing “change” could mean a number of things, but our team had a heart for raising awareness about suicide on our campus. It’s a very real issue that hit home for several of us in the group that never gets brought up or talked about by anyone. After bouncing back-and-forth between what method we would choose to carry out our suicide awareness effort, welanded at the doorstep of the University’s Counseling Center. We were handed a skeleton ideafor a project—an ad campaign to target close friends to be on the lookout and refer troubledfriends who might be at risk for suicide and in need of the Counseling Center’s services. Itshocked us that 80% of students who commit suicide tell someone close to them before makingan attempt, usually a friend. The problem was that none of these people they tell usually seek  professional help for their friend because of the stigmatism it carries in telling.The University had wanted to do the campaign for some time now, but it lacked the man power to push around the ideas and develop a final product that wouldserve asbean effectiveadvertising campaign. As a team, we churned around the information that was provided for usand worked to create the campaign. Our ultimate goal was to reach out to students and not onlyreduce the stigma of reaching out for help, but hopefully increase the number of students referred by friends. Even if we reached one person, it could be a life saved and worthy of our hard work.We learned that once a suicidal student was referred to the Counseling Center’s program, therewas well over a 90% success rate for students getting back on track again after  participating inonly the 4 mandated sessions. For us, this went beyond a class project—we truly wanted to usethis time to help our own community.
Goals
Team Camel had several goals at the beginning of our project and as time pressedforward, we realized that we had to narrow our goals down in order to accomplish somesuccesses. We began the project with an overarching goal of raising awareness of suicide on our campus amongst students. We wanted to do this by providing students with information aboutsituations in which suicide has taken place on our campus, along with discussing ways in whichwe could all work together to prevent suicide. After doing more research and meeting with HerbJones from Housing, we decided that we would narrow the focus of our project from simply1
 
raising suicide-awareness on campus,to raising awareness about the help that is available for students who may be suicidal. We eventually learned from Paul Joffee, the suicide exporter atthe Counseling Center, that our advertising campaign should target the peers of a potentiallysuicidal student. This knowledge was a turning point for our team because we felt that if wecould help students understand the signs of suicide and how they could get help for their friends,we would most definitely be contributing towards significant change on campus.With our new goal in mind that focused on raising awareness of the suicide preventionservices on campus, Team Camel set another goal that centered on making sure our advertisements reached the students directly. We wanted the students whom we were targeting tofeel connected to our message. By specifically targeting the peers of a potentially suicidal person, we felt our message would encourage them to pay more attention and internalize theinformation we were providing. As students, we know what it is like to receive several messagesa dayviathrough various mediums. In order to combat the information overload students mayexperience, Team Camel felt it that it was imperative to make sure that the messages we weredepicting connected to the experiences of life on campus. Through our narrative- based ads weknew we would be pursuing our goal centered on raising awareness for suicide preventionservices.Our last goal for our suicide-awareness advertising campaign dealt with the project’ssustainability and potential expansion. We felt that it was important for our project to continue beyond our leadership class because of how important our message was. In order to raiseawareness with the hopes of reducing suicide rates, it would take much more work than a singlesemester afforded. In order to ensure our project’s sustainability beyond our class we have beguna partnership with an organization with a similar set of goals as our own, To Write Lover on Her Arms. We plan on meeting with Lindsay Bailey, the President of TWLOHA, next week todiscuss taking over what we have begun. Throughout our project Team Camel believed that themore students we could reach, the better our outcome would be. Now that we have initiated a partnership with TWLOHA we know that our advertising campaign will have an impact on alarge number of students.2
 
Planning and Action
From the first meeting we had our minds in action mode. With a team name decidedupon,we then discussed what our team guidelines and policies should be. The goal of our meetings were usually established with an agenda and concluded with a discussion of next steps.It seems like the process has developed over a year rather than a few months. The plan for our suicide-awareness advertisement campaign came from hours of brainstorming, much debating,and a great deal of collaborating. We started with a grand advertising campaign with handouts,magnets, and commercials. Once the reality of our time constraint set in, our grand plan evolvedinto an advertisement campaign partnered with the Counseling Center.Once our group knew that our mission was going to be raising suicide-awareness oncampus, the group then united to build our resources based on our relevant university andcommunity based contacts. We first met with Herb Jones from Housing who was happy to assistus with not only the resources to display our campaign, but also the equipment to make ithappen. With our initial idea being a public service announcement that would be shown inhousing as well as the FY-care mandatory orientations, we wanted to make sure our commercialhad a proper tone and a serious message. We next set up appointments with Paul Joffe, arenowned expert on student crisis and suicide awareness. In talking with Mr. Joffe, he sharedadetailed explanation of the background for suicide on our campus. He also surprised our groupwith the support he wanted to continue to give. Mr. Joffe mentioned that the Counseling Center had wanted to do a similar campaign, but because their time and resources were in high demandour group would be a great tool to get the creative and marketing drive initiated. We met Paul bi-weekly and had follow up meetings as a group to formulate our campaign ideas based on hissuggestions and our interpretations. At each one of our group meetings the creativity got deeper and the message more real.Once we figured out how needed our campaign was,to both the center and the Universityas a whole, our desire for success became more apparent. Our team knew we needed todetermine how and where we would display our work. We talked with the CU-MTD and re-visited the housing option. The MTD has agreed to display two campaigns a month on all of the90 buses that circulate both throughout the community and the campus. In talking to the Housingdivision, we learned that we could place one of our advertisements in an information magazinethey would be providing all of their residents next fall. Our group is especially excited about the3
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