Research and planning: twloha (to write love on her arms)

Research and Planning: TWLOHA (To Write Love On Her Arms) To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.  TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery. The formation of TWLOHA started in 2006 by Jamie Tworkowski. TWLOHA started gaining recognition when they used MySpace* as their platform to spread awareness. They started gaining more exposure when bands showed their support for the movement by wearing ‘ TWLOHA t-shirts’’ when performing on stage. Lead singers of popular bands, Paramore and Switchfoot. Currently TWLOHA has a fairly good amount of exposure to the community and society, but in order to reach out to more, staying stagnant is not the solution. Bands can continue wearing t-shirts to show support, and TWLOHA can regularly update their Facebook and MySpace’s statuses but only the same people will get their message. The number of people who are facing depression and going through self-abuse and giving in to drugs for solution are mostly youths and it is widely known that social networking sites are very popular amongst youths. Hence, I recommend them to use popular sites such as twitter, facebook and tumblr as the main medium. Poster would be the secondary medium to spread a little bit more awareness and lastly the supporting medium would be a viral video where target audience can relate themselves. *MySpace: TWLOHA used MySpace, as a platform to spread awareness back then in 2006 as it was a very popular social networking site. It was even more popular than Facebook. Concept Building a) The use of Social Media TWLOHA has already established a facebook page and has garnered more than 1 million likes. In addition, their official twitter page has more than 165, 000 followers. In order to spread more awareness, something has to happen so people can talk/discuss/debate/comment about it. This is what you call a ‘ trending topic’. One good example was the recent Japan earthquake that took many lives. A trending topic emerges with ‘ PrayforJapan’ as a hashtag. TWLOHA has a day dedicated to the movement itself: TWLOHA Day. This year, TWLOHA day will be on November 13th. TWLOHA is simply a day where you literally write the word: “ love” on your arms. Not many people are aware of this day; hence if TWLOHA can get their supporters (those who follow them on twitter and like them on facebook) to spread it through their statuses, this would really help a lot. Step 1: TWLOHA to post a status on TWLOHA day. Step 2: Get artists to tweet about it, post on their official facebook page. Step 3: Update on what is going to happen, what should people tweet about? Step 4: Few days before the TWLOHA Day, constantly update on facebook and twitter to remind people. Step 5: On November 13th, get everyone to tweet about TWLOHA Day. Make it a trending topic! What is the update on? Here’s the catch. On TWLOHA Day itself, get everyone to tweet on ‘ LoveistheMovement’. Basically they can tweet about anything from giving encouragement to people to sharing their stories or how TWLOHA has helped them. They just need to remember to leave the hashtag #loveisthemovement. If everyone tweets about it, tweets it lots of times, then #loveisthemovement will become a trending topic on twitter, it will be known worldwide. People will click on it to find out why is it trending and eventually they will know about TWLOHA movement. Everyone will then join in the cause and spread awareness to their friends. b) Web Banner Web banner is a cheap and fast advertising because almost everyone who has a computer will access the Internet and when they do, these ads will on various websites, and if they are good enough they will respond to our intended call-to-action. In order for your web banner to be recognized, you have to choose a popular website but you have to make sure it reaches out to your target audience and not just anyone in general. In this case, my target audience is people who are facing depression and self-harming themselves. People who are having drug addiction problems as well. And these categories of people normally lie within the youths. I have decided to go for www. perezhilton. com because a lot of youths, young adults and basically adults goes to that website to check out on gossips and what not. His website is very popular worldwide. Perez blogs about anything celebs. Celebrities going into rehab. Who’s dating who and etc. c) Poster A very common and traditional way of promoting your brand, cause or service. A poster has to be very attention grabbing so people will stop to take a look. Since TWLOHA is a movement to help people, we can use gory pictures (for e. g. a girl cutting herself and bleeding) or we can make use of a really good tagline that draw people in and make them check out the official website.