PROJECT EVALUATION:

GIVE RACISM THE FINGER CAMPAIGN

JANUARY SEPTEMBER 2011

PREPARED BY: PRISCILLA BRICE-WELLER MANAGING DIRECTOR ALL TOGETHER NOW 7 NOVEMBER 2011

This project is part of a broader three-year campaign to reduce racism in Australia among ambivalent adults, which is roughly 40% of the adult population. This group is happy with cultural diversity in principle, but they prefer assimilation over an intercultural society. The project aimed to disseminate an anti-racist message to this group by engaging young adults (aged 18-45) who are positive about cultural diversity and encourage them to have conversations with their ambivalent friends and family members about racism. This aim would be achieved by using social contexts, face-to-face discussions, online social media tools, and public arts.

PROJECT OVERVIEW
Our funded project, which is a subset of a broader three-year campaign, was to engage customers of The Body Shop (who are largely identified as being in the positive about diversity group) to have constructive conversations about racism with their more ambivalent friends. Often this would be in the form of bystander action speaking up when they witness racism. Research shows that when a bystander speaks up, they will feel better as a result, the victim will feel more connected to their community, and the perpetrator will be less likely to say something racist in the future. All Together Now planned to do this in partnership with The Body Shop by asking their store staff to speak to their customers about racism. The customers would be asked to demonstrate their willingness to speak up about racism by dipping their finger in ink, and placing their inked finger on a canvas letter in the store. Our aim was to have at least 20,000 people commit to speaking up about racism whenever a racist comment is made. This was later increased to a stretch goal of 40,000 on the suggestion of The Body Shop prior to the campaign launch.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The objectives for this project were as follows: 1. to build the confidence of The Body Shop employees to speak about, and act on, racism and racial discrimination; 2. to have a signed commitment from 20,000 of The Body Shop customers during the period of the campaign period who will speak to their family members about the effects of racial slurs on individuals and the community; 3. to increase the number of All Together Now supporters; 4. to build long-term partnerships with new people and organisations; and 5. to execute a well-managed campaign.

PROJECT PLANNING PROCESS

All Together Now started the project by interviewing staff on video in five of The Body Shop stores about what they thought would work in-store. The suggestions ranged from supplying training resources for staff, to having window posters that had a limited number of words to attract customers into the store, to being courageous with our messaging. We took this advice together with recommendations from our reference committee (a small group of Australian academics and practitioners who work in the specialised field of racism prevention), and held a brainstorming day. From this meeting emerged several concepts. After discussing these with All Together Nows board the decision was made to use an image of a fingerprint as our campaign creative concept, because every person has a fingerprint, and they are all similar but unique. This imagery encapsulates the message behind All Together Nows campaign of celebrating cultural diversity while also recognising that we are all Australians. It also retains the complexity of the message rather than reducing race and culture to a simplistic symbol (e.g. skin colour, food). Shift used the fingerprint concept to come up with the slogan Give Racism The Finger. Their pitch was that when customers entered a store, they would be asked to Give Racism The Finger by dipping their finger in ink and placing their fingerprint on a canvas. By doing so, they were committing to speak up when they witnessed racism. This bystander action is in line with current Australian research and also the position of the Australian Human Rights Commissions Race Discrimination unit. The Give Racism The Finger concept relied on The Body Shop store staff to have the confidence and knowledge about racism to talk to customers about the campaign. We acknowledged that these conversations might be difficult for some staff to have with customers, so we provided them with materials to help them understand the issues and anticipate tricky questions. These were delivered in the form of team discussion starters (so they could practice conversations with their colleagues), videos, and a staff pack containing statistics and other vital information. These materials were provided each week over three weeks to prepare and inspire them.

Shift created the design for the campaign collateral for: staff t-shirts postcards and stickers for customers posters for store windows and point of sale areas tent card media release staff discussion starters PicBadge (social media profile badge) Twitter background Facebook banner email banner / website banner

Shift organised the printing of all of the relevant print materials, as well as the preparation of all the canvases for fingerprints (each canvas had the outline of a letter which customers were asked to colour in with their fingerprints collectively these canvases spelled Give Racism The Finger), rental of 10 easels onto which the canvases were placed in the Top-10 grossing stores, and the couriering of all these items to The Body Shops warehouse in Melbourne for dissemination to the stores.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
We launched the campaign on 16 May 2011 in all 83 of The Body Shop stores across the country. Some stores personalised their campaign, which we encouraged (see image on right). A weekly incentive was awarded to the store staff who went above and beyond the call of the campaign. The four stores that won this award attracted local media, were very active on the campaign Facebook page, or did something else extraordinary to promote the campaign. We also awarded a prize for the store that collected the largest number of fingerprints. Online we promoted the campaign primarily on Facebook. We encouraged discussion by posing provocative questions or statements on the page once a day. We also used Twitter to promote the campaign. Our board member Monty Noble was able to encourage several footballers including Lote Tuqiri, Wendell Sailor, Mark Geyer and Quade Cooper to tweet about the campaign, thereby raising awareness on those days.

Subsequent to the in-store campaign, Monty leveraged our in-store successes by contacting a business colleague at outdoor advertising company JCDecaux. They agreed to support the campaign by providing 50-60 outdoor advertising spaces around Melbourne for one week. This support was unexpected and a huge win for the campaign.

PROJECT OUTCOMES
In our funding submission, we outlined five goals for this project. Our project measured up against these goals as follows:

GOAL 1: TO BUILD THE CONFIDENCE OF ALL THE BODY SHOP EMPLOYEES TO SPEAK ABOUT, AND ACT ON, RACISM AND RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.
At the conclusion of the in-store campaign, The Body Shop store managers completed a survey in consultation with their team that would help us ascertain the success of this goal. 32 of the stores (39%) sent their completed survey back to head office. The averaged statistics show a marked increase in employees knowledge about racism as a result of participating in the campaign: they self-rated their teams knowledge and passion about racism before the campaign as 6.4/10 and after the campaign as 7.9/10, an increase of 23%. Store self-rating post-campaign Teams care factor during and after campaign Our team feels confident about speaking about racism if it occurs in-store Our team feels they know more about taking reactive and proactive action against racism Teams confidence talking to customers about campaign Teams knowledge and passion before campaign Average rating (out of 10) 7.9 7.6 7.3 7.0 6.4

On the whole, feedback from staff was positive. Most stores who responded to the survey said they were really happy that they were able to help promote The Body Shops human rights values. However, some stores struggled to frame conversations with customers in a constructive or positive way, particularly when the customer said they were racist and didnt want to participate, or that racism doesnt exist in Australia. Some of the most common excuses for not participating: I dont think racism exists in Australia Australia is not racist I am racist If I do this, what will change?

WHAT WEVE LEARNED

These results have provided us with a benchmark for our future campaigns, and increased our confidence as an organisation. We believe the timing and quality of resources and training provided to The Body Shop store staff was high; however, we may have provided too much information for staff to absorb. Some staff suggested that the information in the staff pack might have been better presented on a poster for the staffroom so that it would be easy to absorb and a constant reminder of the key facts.

We also believe the training might be improved next time by asking staff to report back on their team conversations about racism prior to the campaign. This might be done by running a quiz and each store that completes it is entered into a prize draw. This would ensure that employees understand the key talking points before being faced with customers asking about the campaign.

GOAL 2: TO HAVE A SIGNED COMMITMENT FROM 20,000 OF THE BODY SHOP CUSTOMERS DURING THE CAMPAIGN WHO WILL SPEAK TO THEIR FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF RACIAL SLURS ON INDIVIDUALS AND THE COMMUNITY
Our initial aim of at least 20,000 people committing to speak up about racism was derived from the results of previous campaigns in The Body Shop. By the end of the campaign, we had collected 50,706 fingerprints in The Body Shop stores. This is 254% higher than originally anticipated. This averaged out across the stores to one in three customers giving racism the finger, equating to 150,000 conversations across all customers who purchased an item. The Body Shop has estimated that around 300,000 conversations took place in total, when non-purchasing customers are also accounted for. We believe this success was due to: having a low barrier to participation: we did not ask people for their personal contact details; asking people to participate in a fun / interactive way; creating a provocative and cheeky campaign to grab customers attention; and providing customers with a postcard they could take away to remind them why its important to speak up when they witness racism and use as a tool to start a conversation with somebody else about the campaign.

WHAT WEVE LEARNED

Weve learned to be more confident about our ability to outperform other not-for-profits and even our own goals, and to be optimistic about the results we can achieve when we put our hearts and minds into our work. Weve shown through this campaign that although we are a new organisation we can punch well above our weight, thanks to the passion and talent of our team and in-kind supporters.

GOAL 3: TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF ALL TOGETHER NOW SUPPORTERS

Having discussed our data collection options with The Body Shop and Shift Communications, we decided that the most effective and appropriate way of staying in touch with supporters after the campaign was on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/alltognow. This was because taking customers personal contact information at the point of sale would be problematic (privacy issues, it takes time to fill in a form, and in previous campaigns many customers provided false data anyway), and that staying in touch on Facebook could be a more frequent, personal, interactive and less expensive way of communicating with supporters than any form of direct mail (including email). We worked with Shift to create a daily discussion sheet which helped us to prepare for the Facebook discussions beforehand and ensure a range of techniques (questions, polls, videos etc.) were used to capture peoples attention. We asked store staff to ask customers to upload a photo of themselves in the store giving racism the finger. They could do this immediately using their mobile phone while they still had ink on their finger. Feedback from staff indicated that they were reluctant to do this and we believe this is partly because this is the first time they had asked customers to use their phone to take a photo and upload it. We also distributed 10 cameras to the highest-grossing The Body Shop stores and asked store staff to take photos of customers giving racism the finger. The staff regularly uploaded the photos to a folder that we then posted on Facebook, helping to increase interest and momentum for the campaign. By using Facebook we have been able to facilitate conversations on a national scale long after the in-store campaign in a way that any other method cannot currently do on a national scale. To date, we have nearly 1,500 Facebook friends (we started the campaign with around 200 and were hoping to reach 2,000). We continue to facilitate provocative conversations that encourage people to think about racism and their own behaviour. To support our Facebook discussions we also used the following tools:

EMAIL
Although our primary aim was to get sign-ups on Facebook, we also cross-promoted our email list for less frequent communications from All Together Now. This provides us with more data on our supporters than we have through Facebook, however it is generally one-way communication and comparatively infrequent.

PICBADGE
We asked customers, Facebook friends and Twitter followers to add a PicBadge (www.picbadges.com/give-racism-thefinger-2/1698455/) to their profile picture (see image on right). This demonstrates to their friends that they have Given Racism The Finger and helps spread the word. To date 192 people have used our PicBadge, the second-most popular antiracism badge on the PicBadge website after the Finnish Red Crosss Week Against Racism campaign.

TWITTER
We felt it was important to have a Twitter presence for the campaign as the audience demographic of people who use Twitter differs from Facebook. We used Twitter more sporadically than Facebook by retweeting messages of support and updates on incidences of racism in the news. A number of celebrities also tweeted about the campaign.

VIMEO AND YOUTUBE

During the planning stage of the campaign, a local film studio Hunting With Pixels donated their time and equipment for a day to film interviews in three Sydney The Body Shop stores with staff answering the question, Why is a campaign about racism important to The Body Shop?. Hunting With Pixels subsequently produced the video on an in-kind basis: http://www.vimeo.com/22981314. The purpose of this was to promote our partnership with The Body Shop and particularly their passion for anti-racism. It was also provided to each store on a DVD to prepare employees for the campaign. At the conclusion of the campaign, All Together Now spoke at The Body Shop retail managers conference. For this event, All Together Now produced a video to summarise the campaign: http://www.vimeo.com/29171383, using some of the hundreds of photos taken in-store during the campaign.

WHAT WEVE LEARNED

We are a little disappointed with these results, particularly as we had put a lot of thought into making this part of the campaign work effectively. We think if we were to run a similar action in stores in two years time the staff may be more open to trying it. We also believe we could have had a more cross-connected social media strategy to support the campaign. We did not use our online tools in a way that supported the message consistently on all platforms. For future campaigns we will ensure our online marketing communications are better integrated across platforms.

GOAL 4: TO BUILD LONG-TERM PARTNERSHIPS WITH NEW PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS

Over the campaign, we built relationships with the following organisations that worked with us on this campaign:

THE BODY SHOP

The Body Shop was a cornerstone partner in this project. The Body Shop staff generally went over and above what we had anticipated, particularly for such a politically sensitive topic. We have learned a lot about how The Body Shop successfully integrates values into the way they do business, and we believe they have also learned a lot from us about anti-racism.

SHIFT COMMUNICATIONS
We formed a strong relationship with Shift Communications (an advertising company) and were impressed by the level of support they gave us. They treated us like a paying client and gave us access to their creative team and an account manager. Without the help of Shift, this campaign would not have run as smoothly as it did, nor would it have been as creative.

HUNTING WITH PIXELS

Hunting With Pixels is a small studio in Newtown who helped us promote our relationship with The Body Shop. Together we visited three The Body Shop stores located in areas with different cultural demographics (Liverpool, Chatswood and Galleries Victoria) and filmed the store staffs responses to various questions about racism.

BBBBB
BBBBB has asked not to be publicly identified as a supporter of this project because All Together Now is not a formal charity partner of BBBBB. BBBBB supplied 10 digital cameras for us to distribute to the 10 highest-grossing stores, which enabled these stores to take photographs of customers giving racism the finger. Staff uploaded these photos daily into an online folder, and we published the photos on Facebook to keep the campaign page interesting. A champion in each store was allowed to keep the camera after the campaign as an incentive. We subsequently published the photos on Flickr and used the photos to create a short film summarising the campaign: http://www.vimeo.com/29171383.

JCDECAUX
We approached outdoor advertising company JCDecaux to support the campaign. JCDecaux agreed to put up 60 posters at various Melbourne train stations for one week. The goal of this poster campaign was to increase the number of Facebook friends. We saw a spike in Facebook likes during the JCDecaux campaign. However, it was small when compared with the spike during the in-store campaign. This is not to say that the poster campaign was ineffective, but rather we believe it shows how effective a campaign in The Body Shop is in boosting our online community.

OTHER BENEFITS
In addition to these partnerships, we also had a small number of unexpected opportunities off the back of the campaign. The campaign: helped attract local media attention: FBI radio in Sydney, The Worldwide Show on Koori Radio in Sydney (image on right), the Bendigo local newspaper, and The Adelaide Review newspaper; donations from the public; support from expert consultants who have helped us improve our work; credibility with the Australian Human Rights Commission and other government bodies; and a new partnership with a large public sector union (public announcement forthcoming).

WHAT WEVE LEARNED

Weve learned to ask far and wide about potential partnerships and allies. In particular the support from BBBBB and JCDecaux came about unexpectedly. Weve realised that it is much easier to build interest from partners once they see we already have support from others. Involving partners remains key to all of our work.

GOAL 5: TO EXECUTE A WELL-MANAGED CAMPAIGN

The campaign was ready to launch on time. This was largely due to excellent communication between key personnel at The Body Shop, All Together Now, and Shift. There were some technical hiccups along the way, particularly around sourcing and couriering easels and canvases. Working on a tight budget AND timeline was at times very challenging for all involved. All Together Now went slightly over budget on this campaign, largely due to higher than anticipated courier costs. The overspend was covered by public donations. A breakdown of budget income and expenditure is listed in the next section of this report.

WHAT WEVE LEARNED

We have learned that it is important for team members in a cross-organisational team to communicate often and clearly. We had a positive relationship with our partner organisations right from the start. This ensured that if problems arose we would be able to negotiate a solution. We have also recognised the need to be more insistent about coming in on budget to our partners. We have concluded that things many people might take for granted (e.g. postage or courier costs) are more difficult for us to justify and that more time is needed to carry things out so that we can manage our costs.

PROJECT RESOURCES FINANCES

Amnesty International Australia kindly granted $10,000 to All Together Now from their Human Rights Innovation Fund. Unexpectedly, in January 2011 The Body Shop invited all their Values Partners to make a pitch to win a grant for their next in-store values campaign. The staff voted for their favourite campaign pitch and All Together Now came in second, providing us with an additional $5,444. Given this additional and unexpected funding, we were able to be more creative with this campaign than originally anticipated. Instead of sticking to paper-based collateral (posters, postcards) we decided to collect fingerprints on artist canvases that would absorb the ink better than cardboard and be more visually attractive to customers in the stores. This combined with the extraordinary in-kind support from Shift meant that most of the money could be used to produce the campaign collateral. Expenses Grant income: Amnesty International Australia Grant Income: The Body Shop Donation Income Campaign Collateral: Printing Canvases Ink Pads Easel Hire Hooks (to hang canvases) Camera disks & batteries Couriers and postage Incentives: store prizes Travel (TBS conference, car hire) SUBTOTAL Surplus (Deficit) Income 10,000.00 5,443.56 49.50

6,490.00 4,840.00 550.00 1,150.00 286.25 113.86 2,068.75 233.80 615.41 16,348.07 (855.01) 15,493.06

IN-KIND SUPPORT
In addition to funding, our campaign partners provided the following in-kind support that had a combined monetary value of $138,435: BBBBB: 10 cameras to document the campaign in high-grossing stores Step Two Designs: rent and overheads The Body Shop: retail and head office support, campaign exposure Hunting With Pixels: film and produce 2 PR videos Shift Communications: design and account management JCDecaux: outdoor advertising $1,000 $3,900 $60,802 $2,000 $69,733 $17,150

We could not have achieved this support without leveraging Amnestys initial grant, and we are grateful to Amnesty for putting their trust in us by becoming our first funder. In particular, the support of BBBBB, JCDecaux and Shift Communications was garnered entirely as a result of the support from The Body Shop and Amnesty International Australia.

STAFF AND VOLUNTEER SUPPORT

This campaign was made possible thanks to the volunteer work by All Together Nows team of Directors: Monty Noble, Yin Paradies and Trish Hansen. In particular, All Together Nows founder Priscilla Brice-Weller currently works as a full-time volunteer for the organisation, and it was her willingness to manage All Together Nows commitment to fulfilling these partnerships, and her determination to see it succeed, that ensured its success.

TOTAL VALUE
The financial value of the campaign was as follows, and comes to a combined monetary value of $194,878:

Donations, $50

Grants, $15,444

Volunteer support, $40,950

In-kind support, $138,435

CONCLUSION
This campaign sought to compel customers in The Body Shop to show their commitment to speak up about racism. It attracted 254% more public pledges than anticipated, and clearly had a positive impact on The Body Shop store staff. For the value of $194,878, All Together Now and its partners: saw a 23% increase in The Body Shop staffs knowledge and passion about racism; compelled 50,706 people to commit to speaking up about racism; initiated an estimated 300,000 constructive face-to-face conversations about racism; created and distributed 50,000 postcards about the importance of bystander action to a wide range of people; engaged 1,300 people in provocative conversations about racism on Facebook (and more on Twitter); increased All Together Nows supporter base; formed relationships with new volunteers, media outlets, partners and donors; improved the sustainability, confidence, reputation and credibility of All Together Now as a new not-for-profit organisation; created a PR opportunity for The Body Shop to show the public how they walk the talk; and provided some learnings for The Body Shop and Amnesty International Australia for future in-store values campaigns.

For this we gratefully acknowledge the support from the following organisations without whom this would not have been possible: Amnesty International Australia The Body Shop Shift Communications Hunting With Pixels JCDecaux BBBBB