Objectives: As Unity’s social media team at the time we were tasked by The Law Society with building the digital and social media strategy to build and activate a community to protest against the government’s proposed cuts to legal aid, one of the central tenets of the Magna Carta and a cornerstone of British justice ever since.

Campaign strategy: The issue that we were fighting against was much less tangible and much harder to empathise with than similar campaigns at the time against cuts to the NHS and the student fees protests. The campaign therefore needed to bring the issues to life up front and tell the story as quickly and powerfully as possible, then leading to deeper content and information sitting behind it to allow people to understand the situation and what The Law Society was suggesting they should do about it.

But we also needed something to make the campaign more news and buzz-worthy. Something different that would give it an edge. So we created the concept of the first ever voice-mail protest (to fit in with the campaign theme of ‘Sounding Off’) to prevent the nation being silenced in court.

Campaign tactics: The voicemail protest was the most technical campaign element we had done for a long time – built around an IVR system that allowed people to put in their number and then be instantly called and asked to leave a message – seemingly directly for justice secretary Ken Clarke (actually a typically amusing imitation by Alastair Mcgowan).

There needed to be lower-level, more accessible calls to action that would demonstrate the power of feeling and convince the coalition to change their minds and approach the reform in a more productive manner (still cutting the budgets but approaching them in a different way – capping limits and making the process more efficient). A standard petition was included, as well as support for submitting letters to local MPs or members of the select committee and content and messaging that could be shared with personal networks.

We also had to activate those that needed no educating around the issue – namely the lawyers themselves (done through pushing out stories and content through legal influencers on Twitter and Facebook as well as through the pages of the Law Gazette) and join the swell of activity protesting against the proposed cuts in general – done through monitoring and responding to conversations online across geographies, demographics and the industries that would be most affected. We also joined the march – again creating a stand-out talking point that linked into our theme through the Sound Off choir.

To help take the campaign out there and provide assets to support stories films were created bringing to life the effects the cuts would have on situations such as fighting for custody of children and wrongful dismisal. Real life case-studies were also extremely helpful to tell the story powerfully and demonstrate where issues would get worse under the reforms.

The most important asset created, however, turned out to be the blog – as the best way to show the depth of thinking behind the alternative reforms and critique the cuts as well as the process to get there. This also provided the constant flow of content that we needed to grow the social media community – and because there were enough in the legal community and beyond ready to champion the cause from the outset we got the momentum that a campaign needs to start the band-wagon effect, pulling people in through the social media content and discussion cycle and gradually increasing the volume of dissent and speed of growth.

Results: To date there have been 31,368 ‘Sound Offs’ – which count as any action supporting the campaign – a sign-up, a voice-mail, a petition sign or a tweet in support. The community has almost four thousand members on Facebook and more than 2,750 on Twitter. There have been also more than 200 blog posts and online news stories covering the campaign. So – to take an overview and gut reaction it is difficult to argue that it has been successful.

However, the real result is obviously only going to become clear when the reforms either gets pushed through or modified significantly or thrown out altogether. This is a long and ongoing process and one that it can be hard to get your head around (when used to much quicker campaigns and cause and effects).

When a cause is so abstract and unknown to the public getting any kind of traction is a challenge. But in fact – the real value of the public facing campaign is purely to act as collateral in the public affairs arena anyway. To show a movement of public opinion is the door-opener rather than the deciding factor anyway – and the end results will be a mixture of the influence of the lobbyists and the security of the proponents’ position, along with how convincing (or just comprehensible) the alternatives are.

As this was an extremely large campaign led and run by Unity we should clarify our role:

• Strategy for integration across platforms and creating and activating the call to action through content & messaging
• Twitter profile management & outreach to relevant influencers and discussions happening online
• Facebook page management – sharing content from the campaign with
• Blog management – uploading, optimising and pushing out stories and content
• Outreach to third party bloggers in legal, family and vertical sectors
• Video optimisation and seeding
• Event support, including:
• going on-location to provide live updates and photos from campaign events
• managing live blogging/tweeting activities (i.e. whenever something big happens in parliament) – ensuring technical setups, monitoring for live conversations, making recommendations on where to answer, activating our follower bases across social profiles, etc
• Website optimisation recommendations
• Email newsletter creation and sending

This Halloween was the first time we had overtly publicised our game rather than integrating it surreptitiously with the main experience. Which meant that we had a separate Winterwell Adventures Facebook page and were charging for an add-on ticket. Just £5 per head but it did mean that people were both opting in advance and paying for our experience.

This also meant that we could message the participants properly in advance, driving them to a simple mobile microsite providing them with the background and logistical information they needed. This was their first proper introduction to PICOUK – the Paranormal Investigators (after the ‘recruitment trailer’), who then met them at The Mason’s Arms and logged them into the full mobile Scramboo web app for the experience before sending them out to the claustrophobic Ghost-hunter 1 in the garden for the briefing on how to save the soul of poor Gertrude Gribble – locked in a cupboard 178 years ago and still needing release through a bespoke ritual that they needed to discover the elements for.

They were then (mostly) guided by instructions on their mobile down Harrow Road and then the side-streets leading to Scrubbs Lane interrupted on their way by a couple more ghost-hunters laying a trap to test their awareness before sending them off to encounter the real Gertrude. As well as sighting Gertrude ringing her lonely bell from afar they were interrupted by an ethical fashion journalist on the trail of Film Plus’s fashionista, one of her models (thrown out for complaining about the spectral activity in the venue) and a gypsy loitering in the cemetry selling sage.

At each point they were confronted with instructions on where to go followed by a challenge that had to be answered by listening carefully to the characters they were confronted with, or observe the environment around them (notably the wonderfully conveniently placed Church of Divine Redemption and Arrogant Accessories (purported suppliers to the fashionista).

The would-be ghost-hunters then made their way down to Film Plus and into the venue. Moving through the entrance and up into Studio 1 they were confronted by Dina Atienza and her team (aka the awesome Air Images) – venue owner and fashionista – desperate for models for her gothic photo-shoot that was in danger of being ruined by all the models being scared away or thrown out for their histrionics. So the participants were welcomed in and shot by Dina’s team as they tried to extract information from her about why the venue was haunted and where the most activity happened.

From there they went through to the kitchen next door and into an EERG activated seance. Most of the groups thought the brain-scanner placed on one of their heads was a hoax, but it actually was reading their brainwaves and activating the flickering lamp and shaking table as a result of their focus (the kit was actually a Star Wars toy modded by the Pan Studio guys). Then after a few minutes Gertrude would be channeled through the radio, giving information on the final piece needed for the ritual – a ring hidden down in her old dormitory.

Downstairs at the entrance of the dormitory the teams were briefed by another PICOUK member and reminded not to be touched by any ghosts – though Gertrude’s friends might be able to help them. They were then let into the room one at a time where they had to evade two guards, talk to a small ghost girl in one of the beds and find the ring – all while a thundering loom and footsteps sounded around them.

Once they had the ring they then had to make their way to Gertrude’s place of imprisonment where they had to ignore her plaintive cries and the psychic energy stirring the room and perform the final ritual – bringing out the ring, plus the sage and a rune symbol provided on the mobile app from their first clue. Burning the sage and chanting the nursery rhyme would then pacifiy Gertrude’s soul and reverse the negative energy chaining her to the earth, the wind and noise would stop and a small girl’s laughter would be heard as her soul was released…

To find out more here’s a trailer, or you can check out our pervasive page on the Winterwell site or on our new pervasive Facebook fanpage.

And if you’re free and keen tickets can be purchased here…

Ben Mason

Ben started out in a graduate’s dream job doing video game PR for titles such as Tomb Raider, Hitman  before setting up the Digital practice group for global PR firm Fleishman Hillard in the UK and Europe. He then took a stint as Head of Digital Comms for creative agency Cake before two and a half years ago he set up his own thing in the still emerging a group of people who like to work and play together across social media and the real world. The rest of them are:

Mihnea Miculescu

Digital comms plug-in currently wandering around London. Tech geek, news junkie and gaming aficionado – in short, he’s all over the place. Born and raised in Romania, extensively trained in the fine art of Consumer PR. He’s been rolling with The Tom Sawyer Effect for quite a while now. Check out his blog at http://miculescu.com/

Rosie Moth

London by birth but – oddly enough – rocking a full-on Florida accent (excellent Puerto Rican impressions included). Uses a state-of-the-art smartphone with a custom Android build but prefers her computers to run Windows. She’s the mother of all dim sum and bowling pins, be it digital marketing or PR.

Rosie came to Tom Sawyer and our partners The Digital Tribe via Orange County Convention Centre, Twig Books and Honav – official producer of pin badges for the 2012 Olympics!

Rudi Morgan 

Born and raised in London and always up for an adventure both online and offline, whether it be hiding extracts of Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome across the internet, a trip to the Americas or the nearest corner shop to grab some milk. Been Tom Sawyer effected from the very early days. People add Music plus a generous dash of social media and a ridiculous helping of Love, voilà! It’s a beautiful life.

warning – contains plot spoilers

Punchdrunk are the best in the business. The business of immersive theatre on a huge scale at least and – following a hiatus when they went to ‘break’ the US – it’s great to have them back with us delivering the kind of spine-tingling, mouth agape or close-up, personal and emotionally riveting experiences that they specialise in.

Along with Secret Cinema they have now reached a level at which big companies are throwing them large amounts of money to deliver branded experiences. The first one was for Stella Artois Black and was a film noir experience delivered via an old Citroen and some dark streets. To enter you had to drink a pint of Black and then enter a prize draw.

Then there was their first show for children – a Dr Who Experience which left the adults outside of the Tardis and the kids free to run from some apparently extremely scary Daleks.

This week they have teamed up with PlayStation to launch Resistance 3 – a vintage world gone post-apocalyptic  alien first-person-shooter. Perfect fodder for a desperate journey through the maze of old tunnels and vaults under Waterloo station.

Traditionally Punchdrunk experiences have been open-world – audiences left to wander around their vast environments, finding the action for themselves. This one had us met by a member of the resistance and given a mission – to get a message to HQ using a code he provided. But first we had to get the power on. And find the computer. And the key to unlock the cage around it, all done in pitch dark with three faltering torches between nine of us.

The first room contained a maze of towering, decaying cardboard boxes. Each space threatened to reveal a threat but it turned out to be just an acclimitasation room. Following a corridor and then the first big vault, uneven ground and puddles underfoot – we found the generator switch and threw it on with a satisfying judder and then hum of electricity.

‘Right, now they know we’re here’ our guide said and sure enough navigating through the piles of junk we were spotted by someone patrolling above and had to run for the first time and barricade the gate at the end.

The next section was the service area to a hospital, toilets, kitchen and study that we had to search as the bulbs flickered intermittently, giving us half a second of light in five. In the fourth room was an old Amstrad inside a cage which we had to unlock and then enter a code into it in MS-DOS to stop an alarm that had been building in intensity. As we did so (on the fourth and final try) music started instead. The kind of music that lets you know something bad’s about to happen.

Which it did. Our guide was stood by one of the previous room’s dark doors and suddenly he was pulled violently into it. And so we ran. Through a hospital ward, up stairs, through another box maze and into a huge vault, chased by bad guys – well maybe guys, maybe the Chimera from the game – we didn’t stop to find out but sprung breathless into the after-party – a room filled with PlayStation consoles and a bar and a DJ playing party-house.

Though it wasn’t overly filled with people. There were about half the number of consoles they had for us to play on to people in there. But this was an outcome of the number of people that could be put through the experience – around 30 per hour by our reckoning. Which compared to the budget that must have been expended on it. But then it wasn’t really for us. Yes we are going to go and tell everyone we meet for the next few days about it. And those that we know will be interested for much longer (though there are currently just 22 comments on the dedicated PlayStation access Facebook tab).

Like many of our campaigns the whole thing is really just a PR vehicle. Why have a launch party with no chance of securing any coverage in its own right when you can do a launch that is more of a news story than your new product? Though they only seem to have generated 17 news stories so far (with an admittedly cursory search though).

So the question I would ask is the same one we often have to ask ourselves – what is the value versus the investment that went into it. And without knowing enough about either side it’s difficult to say, but while this kind of activity does drive the kind of social kudos most brands would salivate over until you can start either putting larger numbers through or generating the kind of content that can generate mass reach they can only really work as an influencer / buzz campaign. But we were definitely buzzed…

At both last summer’s festival and our Halloween event the presiding emotion that I was left with (apart from the relief and excitement that we were finally running real world games on a decent scale) was gratitude and wonder at how much the right people will do to help you to deliver something they agree is worth doing.

For summer 2011 I absolutely had that feeling and actually felt it much more strongly – the team at Malice in the Making who ran most of the Game of Ur experience proper were extraordinary in what they pulled together, Sam Hill and Ben Barker from Pan Unity had pulled together the initial Gameboard of Ur Knightmare style experience both technically and visually really strongly – in particular the ‘sensory deprivation helmet’ with one way communication to the remaining team-members abandoned in the tent. And we had both more and more powerful performers than we had ever had before.

So, again I was indebted to all involved and so, so grateful to everyone for their extraordinary efforts. But I also felt the opposite – which is that yes people can be extraordinary and give so much and be the wheels without which your project just would not turn. But when you’re creating something from nothing, making it up as you go along, pulling in favours, trying to drag everyone in the same direction and get them to understand what they’re signing up for, they can also let you down.

A combination of bad weather and a run of Don Quixote-esque luck obstructed eight of our supporting volunteers from getting down to the site. As a result of a lack of hands / faces (well, whole bodies I suppose) we had to scale back a couple of the activities we were scheduled to run. One of the central tenets of our approach is that more or less any part of the activity can be severed without impacting the rest – we have to create a many legged hydra in order to deal with the plethora of things that can go wrong, of which volunteers not being there to man every station is just one.

The key is to make sure that every leg of the hydra can be cut off without the body (the main part of the experience) falling over. So we were able to reduce the amount of characters welcoming people on the gate and take them off the shop and archaeological dig site altogether. Of the mini-games Snakes & Ladders  was off because the board hadn’t been built, although by contrast the giant scrabble board was amazing, though we had to have the Cluedo characters doubling it up and running it.

The changes to the structure and resourcing meant there wasn’t anyone to manage pulling in the data on winners from the different games into a schedule so this too went out the window and instead we had the winners given cards and an approximate time to come to the secret door. This meant we had far less control over how many people were coming to play the Game of Ur so we built in a secondary test for entry – poker hands / high card draw with the cards that had been won along the way.

It looked like things were going to change rather more drastically when I was introduced to the Health & Safety officer at 4:30 pm, but apart from saying ‘I’m not happy with this’ a lot she only made us blow out the gas candles and promise to have a personal escort for every group coming through and stop the experience if it started raining hard.

Of the experience itself we actually changed very little. Our Bedouin tent leaked and was pooling with water so we had to move the belly dancers into the Chill Out tent. Which worked quite well as it left more space for the engineers to do their thing. A string maze sprang up in the afternoon unexpectedly and terrified me as much as the H&S officer and the playtube that was to be the birthing canal turned out to only accommodate the shoulders of a four year old so had to be replaced with a camouflage sheet.

And then at the final hour the headliners The Next Men refused to play the main stage and took over the biggest tent for their set instead. Which meant we had to abandon the procession of the King / Queen of Ur to the stage and ritual setting alight of fireworks from the giant Chess king that overlooked it. Instead we finished with the final dance-off by the fire-pit as the sun went down behind the valley walls (having finally come out for our finale). Which was just fine, as it turned out…

My deepest thanks go to Malice in the Making, Pan Studio, Daniel Hernandez, Boys and Dance, Laura Allen, Hassen Bali, Simone Styli-Roussu and Eleanor Young. Without you…

Those that arrived on Friday afternoon & evening were met at the gate by a certain Reverend Green (literally green-skinned and an Alabama preacher to boot) and Colonel Mustard (who had gone a little eccentric in his old age – or perhaps it was the fumes from his yellow nail polish moustache) and challenged to their first games of the festival.

Making their way down to the main site on the Saturday festival-goers were confronted with many more opportunities to play games – from giant card games run by Jess and Male of Jam Media to giant 20:20 Scrabble in the Sizzle Suite tent (which became unexpectedly raucous).

They were also exposed to the rest of the Cluedo cast – a petrified and quivering Mrs White, an intimidatingly refined Mrs Peacock and the artfully seductive Miss Scarlett – all of whom had been with another character at the time of the murder.

Those that were unable to find (or unwilling to engage with) the ‘real-world’ Cluedo characters were invited to scan QR codes that would provide similar information which when added together would leave just Colonel Mustard on his own, with no alibi. Those that confronted the Colonel with this fact and got through his bluster would receive his congratulations and an invitation to the Game of Ur that night, plus an entry time and a playing card as their entry ticket (the winners of the mini-games also received cards and times).

Players were welcomed at the back of the Chill Out tent by a pair of Mesopotamian belly-dancers who tried to persuade players to not risk the unknown dangers of Ur but instead stay with them. At the hidden door their master Uzigurumash corralled the entrants and tent-dwellers alike, ensuring that the precarious ship did not over-turn and that entrants were ready to enter and play the Game of Ur for the first time since 2,500 BC.

Once through the doors of the secret wardrobe players passed through a canopy of ribbons and umbrellas and emerged into a cavernous tent containing two serious men in boiler-suits – the technicians. These serious men would explain the first challenge, making it across the board of Ur and into the game-world proper. In order to do this you have to leave your earthly senses behind and be born again into a new world. 

The first willing volunteer was strapped into a sensory deprivation helmet and led out of the tunnel, aided only by the firm grip of one of the technicians and the words of his team-mates, left behind with a map of arcane symbols and a one way walkie talkie.

Fortunately the helmet had an attachment containing a camer-eye tracking imagery back to a small portable screen in the tent. Once the team had worked out that the ground in front of their advocate contained some of the same symbols as on their map they could use the walkie-talkie to instruct them across the board and into Ur itself.

Once across, and re-joined by the rest of the team, another volunteer would be chosen to go into the darkening forest, to be met by an ethereal midwife who would blindfold them and usher them into the re-birthing canal – a four metre shrouded climb into the arms of two waiting nurses and the sound of a baby wailing. Our game contestant had to follow the sound of the crying further down the trail to be rewarded with a baby’s bottle containing something to still the nerves.

Once re-joined by the rest of the team again a new member was chosen, this time to lose the sense of sound and be re-born to a new language via headphones – and quickly enough to be able to talk their way past a French military checkpoint at the bourder of this new world.

Through the barriers and a spider-maze of twine to be met by a challenge to the sense of sense itself, and a lesson that the old rules do not apply here – this was the hatters tea-party and only by being extremely pliable would you make it through their mad-capped challenge (at least without a faceful of pie).

Past the Hatter and our Urian warriors were confronted by the Hustler, a man who took his visual cues from Slash but his mental acuity straight from God himself. He would only be passed with a repentance from all previous sins and a willingness to enter the black box, cleansed, alone and ready to begin again.

They were – however – not really alone at all. At the bottom of the warm darkness sat the Quiz-master: a man with a bottle, a balloon and a box of trivia questions that demanded answering. And quickly, before things became hysterical.

Having answered his questions the team enter a clearing containing a giant hanging picture frame containing the visages of two afro-Australian dance instructors, who would then emerge with a boombox and run the bewildered dance-contants through a routine that the team would then have to repeat for them.

The best dancers in each group were then given call-cards and asked to return at dusk for the Dance-off, which had around fifty entrants around the bonfire.

The best five dancers were short-listed and then a winner chosen by popular consent – the new Queen of Ur…

To prepare we had a more detailed look at social media take-up and habits across the region. You’ve probably seen the social media world map which has Facebook ever spreading like Alexander the Great or the Blue Plague (if not, here is the latest – and bluest version below), but it was interesting to have a more detailed look at where it is still being put to second place or worse by other offerings.

In sum it’s the Russian sites  Odnoklasniki and V Kontakte that are holding the most ground, along with Nasza Klasa in Poland (which seems to be deriving at least some of its popularity from the sharing of photos like the one below), then Draugiem.lv in Latvia and Hi5 just starting to lose the battle in Romania.

And this seems to the general picture – even where alternative sites are holding onto their members, Facebook is still growing alongside them and threatens to over-take at some point.

This increasing global reach of the big FB is set against the first murmours that its dominance might be slowing down in the early adopter markets (coupled with the potential threat of Google Plus).

So, maybe we have or will soon see the peak, but for the CSEE at least they are still in the ascendance. No one would bet against them for a long time yet, regardless – or at the very most put a place bet with Google as the second runner.

Here are the stats that we pulled together (entirely unverified and unquotable, but could be of some interest). Hopefully we’ll have some more anecdotal insights to share to support them soon too…

The thing about social media, right, is that it now supports more or less everything else that goes on in life. No, this is not my drunken pub chat but it is a glib point. I make it because recently we’ve really been feeling it properly starting to impact from all directions. Most people we speak to – at events, parties, in the pub as much as in meetings –  have some kind of interest in how it could work for them, and a lot of new opportunities are starting to come from friends and contacts not necessarily in communications and marketing. Here are a few of the things that have popped up…

Tackle Africa – a charity that uses football as a platform for AIDS education across East and South Africa and has recently relaunched its website incorporating a lot more fresh content and community

Kenyan Orphan Project – another African charity that runs a combination of street feeding projects and medical support and is looking into educational interventions into schools to manage problems

Cycle for Japan – the fundraising event mentioned back in May which was a lot of fun and raised £2,000 for charity despite us selling the Pimms for the first hour at less than cost. And this

Brian Eno and Rick Holland’s new album Drums Between the Bells – this one saw us approaching Rick rather than being asked – we love both poet and musician and what we’ve heard of the collaboration it’s an amazing album and we’d offered to support it gratis in order to have it on our credentials and to start building out our music experience

We have also started conversations with bands The Draytones, Stickman Cartel and Bleeding Heart Narrative about supporting their future releases , through either social media / blogger outreach, content creation or potentially even integrating them into some of our pervasive experiences.

Hill Farm Apple Juice – this one is for my parents’ apple juice business which we are now creating a blog and community to share pastorally idyllic stories and content from ‘Life in the Juicer’ – and perhaps some myth breaking around the lifestyle as well

Finally the guys behind the awesome Fishtank Festival have asked if we want to get involved with the next one this autumn. This is a very special, eclectic and warm event that brings together everything from entrepreneurial talks to theatre, lucid dreaming seminars to break-dancing.

And every week at least one of us gets approached by a friend who knows someone looking for a different take on their old job in media, marketing and beyond.

This is the Tom Sawyer Effect a little more literally than I ever planned it, but it definitely works for us. So anyone else out there with any little thoughts, ideas or needs, just give us a shout…