Declining membership and outdated public images have prompted two of Canada’s biggest youth organizations to launch cutting-edge advertising campaigns. Girl Guides of Canada unveiled an edgy multimedia campaign during the summer and a campaign from 4-H clubs of Canada will hit radio, print and the web in October.
“We had the feeling people weren’t as aware of us as they once were,” says Shauna Klein, manager of marketing and development for Girl Guides. That feeling was reinforced by membership numbers that have dropped to 120,000 from a high of 250,000 20 years ago.
The story is the same at 4-H where membership has steadily declined and now sits below 30,000 from a high of 80,000 in the mid-1970s. Like the Guides, 4-H recognizes it has to cut through the noise. “There are so many more options for young people today,” says Chris Forrest, communications manager for the Canadian 4-H Council. “There are part-time jobs, computers and all the after-school programs like soccer and karate. We needed to find a new and unique way to market our program.”
The result will be a campaign designed by 4-H’s youth members themselves. Late last year, the organization set up a Youth Advertising Team, which designed the campaign with the assistance of agencies Youthography in Toronto and AdFarm in Calgary. AdFarm’s Laura Laing says that from the outset, YAT’s volunteer members drove the strategy. “At our two meetings, they sat at the main table and we sat behind them and listened.” The result, she says, will be “a campaign that’s very removed from anything ever done before for 4-H, and very far from a traditional motherhood and apple pie approach.”
It’s also a campaign that is a key part of the organization’s image makeover, an attempt to show young people that today’s 4-H is about more than farm kids raising prize steers. Forrest says the organization’s learn-by-doing mandate today includes such diverse activities as web design, woodworking and drama production. Emphasizing that change, the campaign’s target audience is primarily “rurbans”-young people who live in big-city suburbs and on country acreage and hobby farms, a largely untapped area where 4-H believes it can grow its membership.
Unlike 4-H, the Guides are aiming their current campaign at parents. The creative, done pro bono by Toronto’s John St., uses mock magazine covers and imitation ads (above), all with the “Girls Need Guides” tag line to show that Girl Guides provide a place where young women can be free from the pervasive pop culture messages about weight, looks and clothing.
Reversing declining membership is also “the number one priority” at Scouts Canada, says internal communications specialist Susan Mackie. The Scouts will be ramping up their marketing efforts next year to coincide with the organization’s centenary. That marketing will focus on multicultural communities, says Mackie, where the movement’s largest growth has come in recent years.
For both the Guides and 4-H, this year’s campaigns are only the opening salvo of a battle to convince young people and their parents of their relevance. It’s possible their survival as organizations depends on how well they get that message out.
