Editor’s note: At the beginning of January 2023, CER launched a banner ad campaign on Google to share information about Alcoholics Anonymous that runs through February. In this conversation, CER’s Public Information Liaison Officer talks about the campaign and its goals.
Please tell us about the current ‘Banner Ads’ campaign: what is the message and why is it launched in January?
This is the second time that CER has run a banners campaign and it incorporates learnings from the previous campaign as well as feedback from campaigns run by other AA Regions. It offers an opportunity for us to use visuals to attract viewers who recognize within themselves that they or someone they know may have a problem with alcohol and enables them.
Numerous sources show that coming out of the Christmas and New Year period with the impetus of ‘New Year Resolutions’, January is a good time to ‘carry the message’ and benefit from other campaigns such as ‘Dry January’.
Christmas is a time that often brings issues related to alcohol consumption to the fore, and coming into the new year is when we need to be as accessible as possible. People are more conscious at the start of a new year that they have the opportunity to make it a better year than the last year.
This campaign will run through January and February 2023 and a full presentation will be given to the March 2023 Assembly. The last campaign directed viewers to the CER website, this time they will be directed to a dedicated ‘landing page’ with a similar look and feel to the banner enabling us to better direct the viewer to the next step. People can fill out a contact form and take the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (the 12 questions).
Who is the target audience for this campaign and where do you hope to reach people?
Being internet based it presents an opportunity to reach English speakers across our large geography, specifically in this campaign we are targeting 41 countries where CER offers in-person AA meetings plus the cities of Moscow and St. Peterburg, so 43 target geographies, the last campaign targeted 26 countries, so we have widened the reach considerably.
The images are all AA-approved images and will be presented based on internet activity and keywords used in search criteria. They are presented in a picture format and being visual they are designed to elicit a response in the short time that they will be presented to the browser. Research shows that the typical time taken to decide if a banner image will be ‘clicked’ is in the 1 to 2 seconds range, so that is why images work more effectively than words in capturing attention.
How do you navigate a project like that and what AA traditions did you have to consider?
Anonymity is at the heart of all that we do within AA and must be maintained for this project, therefore CER is ensuring that no personal data is harvested via cookies. This campaign aligns directly with Traditions 11 and 12 as well as with Step 12 and the Responsibility Statement.
We would ask all of our Fellowship to look out for the banners through January and February and if possible, capture a screenshot to be shared. We are also keen to hear about any new members who found their way to the Fellowship via this campaign.
