California Coalition for Youth

California Coalition for Youth is a non-profit, grassroots, organization offering services to young people within our state; advocating for youth rights and providing access to local and state resources.

• Date: November 2017
• Website: California Coalition for Youth
• Facebook: CalYouth.org

As a non-profit organization, the CA Coalition for Youth, (CCY), serves youth at risk, from the ages of 12-24 years old, throughout the state of California. Awarded a state-funded grant, the Executive Director, Kevin McAllister, wanted to provide a 30-second video, appealing to youth to promote the crisis hotline, available 24/7 by text and telephone.

The client communicated to us that youth services see an increase in the need for outreach programs just prior to and during the holiday season, requesting that the video be available prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. Capitol Tech Solutions encouraged CCY to implement a social media campaign, via Facebook to promote awareness.

In previous years, CCY has sourced video marketing materials from alternative sources, however, they felt that the most recent production did not deliver the intended message and the imagery did not speak to the intended audience.

Capitol Tech Solutions, welcomed the opportunity to develop the message, graphics and voices that would appeal to the audience. The user experience team developed a series of questions for our client to provide guidance on demographics, socioeconomics and personality traits of the intended audience.

From these questions, it was concluded that the video message would be directed at multi-cultural youths, between the age of 12-24, that are experiencing depression and thoughts of self-harm due to domestic violence, bullying, or forms of discrimination. In addition, it was determined that the message should engage the parents of struggling teens and youth at risk.

Our creative team at CTS, developed a 30-second script incorporating a message that the CA Youth Crisis Hotline is much more than an entity, it is a team of dedicated, prepared volunteers providing guidance to youth and their parents.

Once the script was approved by the client, CTS worked with our videographer to select stock images and video to create a visual story to accompany the narration. Stock images were selected to restrain the costs of production, allowing the client to allocate a portion of the grant funds to the corresponding, social media campaign.

Through a series of revisions, the user experience and video production teams within CTS, were able to select a sequence of images that they felt represented the reality of challenges faced by youth and their parents and convey a sense of intimacy and hope in the images chosen to portray the volunteers of the organization.

CTS suggested that the finished product offer closed captioning, as well as audio, to address the limitations of devices that may not have an audio option.

The successful delivery of the 30-second video to CCY, marked the completion of the first-phase of the project. The strategy and implementation of a social media campaign, is equally as important, as the video itself. In the original project proposal, the purpose of the user experience piece was for use within a social media campaign, scheduled for December.

The goal of the social media campaign, as stated by the client, is to encourage calls into the Youth Crisis Line, to facilitate this objective CTS evaluated Facebook and Instagram to determine the suitable channel based upon reach, the ability to measure based upon cost per call and appeal to the target audience.

An additional utility of the user experience, 30-second ad emerged upon delivery of the video to the client. The client was so impressed with the quality, imagery and message of the video that it is now being used as an element in their grant funding requests, as part of their organizational profile.