CAMPAIGN DIRECT: ISSUE - BBC WEBWISE. BBC pulls out all stops to make internet accessible. The BBC’s campaign to promote net skills brought an enthusiastic response. Mairi Clark investigates

If you’ve ever ended up apoplectic after struggling to open a milk

carton, get a duvet into its cover or force a pair of chop sticks to

pick up a prawn-ball, you’ll know how a first-time internet user can

feel.

Which is why Leagas Delaney used this type of deceptively easy, everyday

task as the inspiration for its BBC Webwise TV campaign.

Aimed at helping Britons feel more comfortable with the internet, the

campaign is an extension of the BBC’s three-year-old Computers Don’t

Bite campaign, which targeted people terrified by new technology. That

initiative convinced thousands who had never used computers before to

register for courses that taught them valuable IT skills.

Immediately before the Webwise launch, the BBC screened two 30-second

teaser ads showing people coping with frustrating situations, and the

embarrassing results. A man who tries to open a milk carton is soaked by

its contents, while a woman attempting to master chopsticks

unsuccessfully chases a prawn ball around a table.

Lucy Meredith, account director on the Webwise campaign at Leagas

Delaney, insists that making people feel sorry for the characters was

vital to the success of the campaign. ’The idea was that you really

identify with how people feel,’ she says. ’You get a nice empathetic

tone. People look at the situations and say: ’Oh my God, I know how they

feel.’ We couldn’t make them look stupid.’

The teasers were followed by the main campaign using the same films,

only longer. They show the characters mastering the internet, followed

by the Webwise phone number and the line: ’Although many simple things

in life may be a problem, the internet needn’t be one of them.’

The campaign broke at the beginning of the Government-initiated Adult

Learning Week, and was backed up by posters, also created by Leagas

Delaney, and a radio campaign created in-house by the BBC and heavily

tailored to each of its stations. ’The radio networks know their

audiences better than anyone, so it made sense for them to create the

radio trailers,’ Andrew Warner, BBC Online’s marketing manager and the

man responsible for the launch of Webwise, says. ’On all the networks

there is a definite style, so anything not completely in tune with that

would have jarred.’

Halfway through the campaign’s six-week run, themed programming, such as

a live Tomorrow’s World edition with dedicated Webwise content, and a

series of short films called Tales from the Net, ran on the BBC.

Tales from the Net featured real-life stories about people whose lives

had been changed by the net - such as a family who organised a reunion

via the web - in an attempt to make the medium seem more human.

Print media were also embraced, with the support of a series of

advertorials that ran in various Emap Elan magazines to promote both the

Webwise scheme and the helpline. The Radio Times also promoted it and

ran a cover-mount of the Webwise booklet.

Would-be surfers who called the helpline were issued with numbers for

local centres where they could organise their free hour-long taster

session.

The call centre used was not the BBC’s usual, AudioCall, but one

supplied by the Department for Education and Employment, another

supporter of the initiative. The sophisticated DFEE call system was able

to pinpoint the exact location of a caller, enabling an automated

operator system to issue them with contact numbers for their local

learning centre.

The scheme has been a huge success.

The target for the initial six weeks was 100,000 callers, which has been

far exceeded. By the end of May, 150,000 calls had been logged and the

BBC is confident that the majority of these callers will attend a

training session.

’Webwise came out of the BBC’s remit to inform and educate. We conducted

research after the launch of Computers Don’t Bite, and found that a lot

of people were confident with computers but wary of the internet,’

Warner says. ’There are a lot of companies who will teach you how to use

the net, but ultimately we found that people didn’t trust them. We

wanted to tell people what the internet was rather than force them to

get online. People were really keen to know more.’

A down side of the Webwise taster session was that once participants had

finished the hour-long session, there wasn’t anywhere obvious for them

to go to learn more, without being charged. While many centres offer

internet tutoring, using the internet does start to cost if the users

spend long periods of time online. This is something that Warner

considered when first launching the scheme. ’When you go along to the

taster, you are tutored using a CD-Rom which obviously cuts down on the

cost. Some of the centres do have a budget for internet access, so where

possible people could continue their training through one of the

centre’s courses,’ he says.

Sending the CD-Rom out as a mailer was not an option because, apart from

the cost, Warner was unconvinced that the audience of internet beginners

would cope.

’It may sound mad to you and me, but there are people who would feel

really unsure about what to do with a CD-Rom,’ he says. ’By doing it in

the centres, you have someone on hand to help out with every little

question you have.’

A lot of the students on the Webwise course were over 50, had a basic

grasp of using a computer and were keen to use e-mail and surf the net.

Warner is unsurprised by this, as some of the promotional work, such as

the local radio pushes, reached an older audience.

’I think you’re finding increasingly that families are scattered around

the world and older people want to keep in closer contact by e-mail,’ he

says.

Young people were also targeted with advertorials in teen magazines such

as Bliss, which included information about using the net to shop for

trendy clothes and to read gossip about pop music. Radio 1’s dance music

DJ, Dave Pearce, was also brought on board to promote the initiative. To

snare the young male end of the market, Radio 5 spots featured football

fans.

The campaign will go on air again in the autumn and Warner has even more

ambitious plans for it. ’I really want to offer an online tutorial so

that people who are connected can learn at home,’ he says. ’Then, when

they reach a certain stage, they can be sent a certificate from a

recognised organisation.’

This article was first published on Campaign