The Scottish Government

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ISBN 0 7559 1160 1 (Web only publication)

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Campaign overview

• As part of a long term strategy to address problems of racism in Scotland, the Scottish Executive launched a major advertising campaign in late September 2002. A tracking exercise was set up to monitor the impact of this campaign in terms of awareness and its effect on public attitudes.
• Because of the nature of this issue, and because the campaign is attempting to change behaviour/attitudes, its effectiveness needs to be tracked over a long period of time. Attitudes to campaign issues may also be reactive to global events and as such these must be taken into consideration when assessing the overall effectiveness of this campaign.
• This research, Wave 4, was conducted between 15 ^th -23 ^rd April 2004, following Phase 3 of campaign activity which adopted a more focussed approach; namely racism in the workplace and amongst the young.
• This phase of the campaign was, therefore, targeted towards two specific audiences: young people and workers. The media became more targeted accordingly: there was a shift from heavy weight TV activity (using three TV ads) to a campaign led by outdoor posters and radio. Supporting PR and website activity (Young Scot, One Workplace and Kiddesvilles) took place over the whole year.

Highlights

• Spontaneous awareness of outdoor posters remained at a similar level as Wave 3 at 22%, whilst radio increased slightly to 10%.
• 42% of those who recalled poster advertising spontaneously recalled an aspect relating to the Scottish Executive's overall anti-racism campaign.
• Spontaneous recall of strapline 'One Scotland, Many Cultures' was higher in this latest wave - 33%, compared with 20% in the previous wave.
• Posters: 47% of target audience (16-24 year olds) agreed that the poster adverts are mainly aimed at people like you. Agreement with this statement was highest amongst this target audience.
• Radio: 'Ibiza' and 'Label' radio adverts were specifically aimed at 16-24 year olds and the level of awareness amongst this group was the highest at 31%.
• The level of claimed advertising awareness dropped from 68% at the previous wave to 46% at this latest wave.
• Respondents were asked to assess their stance towards people from a minority ethnic background or nationality different from their own. The pattern of self-perceived racist attitudes remained consistent across all 4 four waves, with between 22% and 25% perceiving themselves to hold racist views. At this latest wave, the level was 23%.
• In terms of attitudes, despite improvements being made at the previous wave, trends have not returned to the levels recorded prior to advertising activity taking place.
• Although the campaign is targeting young people in particular, advertising awareness was lower amongst those ages 16-24 (45%) than all other age groups, with the exception of those aged 55+ (31%).

Implications

• The expenditure on this phase of advertising was lower than previous bursts due to budgetary constraints.
• The two post-campaign evaluation waves of research occurred between October 2002 and April 2004 - an 18 month period. It would not be appropriate to expect the campaign to make an impact on such top line statement over such a short period of time.
• We cannot underestimate the influence that world events have played in moulding people's attitudes and opinions. Wave 4 tracking occurred at a time of significant coverage of racial and cultural tensions in the global media, plus domestic asylum seekers coverage. In addition, the campaign ran in the aftermath of the Iraq War and post 9/11.