Agency / Production Company Brief
Project Title / Signature video for SOWC reportMain Point of Contact at UNICEF / Blessing Ejiofor, Communication Officer, UNICEF Nigeria (Lagos)
Other UNICEF Team Members Involved / Eva Hinds, Communication Specialist, UNICEF Nigeria (Abuja)
Doune Porter, Chief of Communication, UNICEF Nigeria (Abuja)
Nicolas Ledner, UNICEF HQ (New York)
Priyanka Pruthi, UNICEF HQ (New York)
Final Project Delivery Date / 8 December 2017
The role of the agency in this campaign
This year, UNICEF’s global flagship publication, State of the World’s Children (SOWC) will focus on the lives of children in the digital age. The publication launch date is 11 December 2017.
As part of the communication plan, a high-quality signature video is needed to bring various aspects of the report to life in narrative form on digital platforms tailored to specific audiences and with specific calls to action.
The agency selected will work closely with the relevant teams at UNICEF to gain an in-depth understanding the issue, the audience, potential distribution, and bring the message of the SOWC Digital Lives of Children report to life with the treatment and storyline devised. The end product should resonate with a global audience via social media – the video should be relatable, simple, human and universal. It must be able to cross cultures and borders.
The video should evoke empathy and understanding in the viewer and prompt them to share the piece via social media. It should embrace new forms of storytelling, and adopt an innovative approach while focusing on characters and situations that can embody the overall messages of this year’s report.
The tone of the video can be from serious to playful, but ultimately informative. The emphasis is not necessarily on what UNICEF is doing but should rather focus on a particular child’s or lead character’s story. If possible, achievements should be emphasized, or a specific challenge a character is able to overcome. Ultimately, the video should be empowering and emotionally impactful. However that doesn’t mean it can’t provide realistic portrayals of difficult situations.
The video will be placed on UNICEF’s social media channels including Facebook and YouTube, and will also be pitched to digital media sites.
Challenge: the issue or problem to be addressed
While the internet was designed for adults, today, one in three users is a child. As such, the digital sphere currently fails to fully recognize children’s rights and needs as distinct from adults – both to connect and to be protected from violence and exploitation. Policy makers, parents, caregivers and teachers must find a way to respect children’s right to protection without restricting their digital access or undermining their agency and right to participation, freedom of expression, privacy and access to information. Without safe, universal connectivity, how can every child be prepared for life?
Children are pioneers, experts and creators in the digital sphere
· Children are connecting at ever-younger ages and increasingly going straight to mobile
· Digital media has transformed and expanded how children learn, socialize, play and express themselves
· For the most vulnerable, the internet can be a lifeline
o In Lagos, Nigeria, children and adolescents living with HIV use mobile phones to connect, send and receive information and tips, helping them to live positively and communicate with their caregivers. They even use the digital interface at times as a substitute for seeing a doctor or visiting a treatment centre. Internet is also a tool to overcome stigma and discrimination prevalent in Nigeria.
· It is vital for adults to take children’s opinions seriously and invite their guidance on how digital policies, ethical design and useful content can best serve their needs
But, opportunity online comes with an equal level of risk
· Children who are vulnerable offline are more likely to be vulnerable online. in addition to bullying, grooming, trafficking and sexual abuse, children online are also at risk of stigmatization, loss of privacy and unfair targeting by businesses
· Risks to children’s digital safety and well-being should be addressed holistically
Without concerted action, (x) billion unconnected children will be left even further behind, deepening inequities.
· Digital exclusion follows the contours of social disadvantage linked to gender, education, wealth and rural-urban divides, but it ushers in new “second-level” divides related to quality of access (activities, platforms and skills)
· By 2025, of the 4.5 billion Internet users, nearly half will come from emerging economies
· Expanded connectivity alone – without attention to digital literacy or quality of access – risks turning the internet from a tool of empowerment into a driver of inequity
· In a wired economy, children with digital know-how have the advantage. What are the lost opportunities for those on the wrong side of the digital divide?
Five Principles to Realise the Potential of the Digital Age for Every Child
1. Provide online access so every child can avail of opportunity in the digital age.
2. Give every child the skills to use the digital space for learning, play, and participation.
3. Protect every child from harm online and safeguard their privacy and identify.
4. Empower children to keep themselves safe online and to respect other users.
5. Promote technological innovations that are ethical and benefit every child.
UNICEF’s overall objectives for this video
The overall goal of this video is to raise awareness and generate increased support for safe universal internet access for all children, but also showcase solutions, lessons learned, and rally viewers to understand how the digital lives of children are a continuum of their real world lives.
Key audience for this video
Social media-driven audiences, including parents, policymakers, caregivers, teachers and the general public
In Nigeria, over 90 million people are connected to the internet, 16 million of them are on Facebook and 40% of them are young people.
Communications Objective and Call to Action
The video should be designed to captivate a global social media audience and raise further awareness on the risks and opportunities for children online.
The story angle for the video should highlight how digital technology has had an impact on children living with HIV/AIDs in Lagos, Nigeria and how it can provide inclusion for children outside the social sphere. UNICEF Nigeria will manage contacts with living with HIV/AIDs in Lagos.
The call to action should link to providing safe digital access for every child in Nigeria (using information provided by UNICEF where necessary and appropriate).
Creative and new content ideas, including animation, to be used in addition to traditional real life video content to maximize the possibility of social media driven online outlets to utilize and share the video.
Social media driven concepts can also be considered should the one video approach not be desired. Some examples are below.
· http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/17/unicef-snapchat-bring-back-childhood_n_7081708.html
· http://tubularinsights.com/snickers-youtubers-when-hungry/
· http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/26/525713479/single-white-rhino-male-defies-age-stereotypes-joins-tinder
Key Deliverables
1. One high quality engaging video provided digitally. The final video should be provided in a mixed version and a clean/split version. Treatment, storyboard, and updates should be provided throughout each stage of the development of the video. Feedback from casting, rough cuts, etc. should all be shared with UNICEF when applicable. Rounds of feedback are essential as is re: shooting select scenes and making edits when needed.
2. Additional assets such as stills and potentially short form video (Instagram, Vine, trailer clips, etc.) to highlight the main piece should also be incorporated into the overall planning for promotion issues.
Tone: Insightful, emotionally engaging, uplifting (when possible), frightful (when needed), with characters personifying empowerment when applicable. Eliciting emotions from the viewer is key.
Duration of the video: 1 minute to 2 minutes.
Below examples of videos that have performed well on UNICEF channels:
· Would you stop if you saw this little girl on the street?https://youtu.be/MQcN5DtMT-0
· A storybook wedding - except for one thing https://youtu.be/wfbi3CxE3Lw
· Every teen’s worst nightmare...And how friendship overcame it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anasZ_mMEx4&t=1s
Key Performance Indicators
· Reach – to increase awareness of the issues, measured by media monitoring and metrics, digital analytics
· Engagement – to emotionally engage the primary target audience, measured by take-up and sharing of key messaging / key content
Resources available for this video
· Contacts to contact to the NGO partner - Positive Action against Aids (PATA) in Nigeria. This partner will help the production company to connect with children living with HIV in Lagos and help engaging children for the video.
Timings/deadlines for this campaign
Preliminary time line
· Selection of agency / production company – 9 November
· Delivery of initial treatment – 15 November
· Delivery of initial script – 20 November
· Delivery of final product – 8 December
EVALUATION
Technical Criteria / Technical sub-criteria / Maximum pointsOverall response / Completeness, organization and presentation of the proposal
Overall concord between the RFP requirements and the proposal / 5
5
Maximum Points / 10
Producer for the signature (this could be a production company / ad agency / videographer) / Range and depth of experience, including experience in developing videos that are shared through social media, directing videos or commercials for top brands, working with projects featuring children, developing short form video clips and or documentary style videos, working with international organizations (or NGOs or non-profits), and creating campaigns targeting a social media demographic / 25
Maximum Points / 25
Strength of the technical proposal / Understanding of the objectives of the video, technical quality and relevance of draft creative concept for the video, and timeliness of the work-plan (showing the detailed sequence and timeline) / 35
Maximum Points / 35
Total Maximum Points / 70
Price Proposal
The price should be broken down for each component of the proposed work, based on an explicitly stated estimate of time allocation.
The total number of points allocated for the price component is 30. The maximum number of points will be allotted to the lowest price proposal that is opened and compared among those invited firms/institutions which obtain the threshold points in the evaluation of the technical component. All other price proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price; e.g.:
Max. Score for price proposal * Price of lowest priced proposal
Score for price proposal X = ------
Price of proposal X
The price proposal should provide a cost breakdown against the deliverables described in Section above.
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