FINAL WRITTEN EVENT

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“44% of sexual assault victims are under the age of 18.” 1

This statistic plays a crucial role in the mission of our project, because high school students

are most often 18 and under. This problem is prevalent in Blacksburg High School and yet seems to

go unnoticed; therefore, we feel the need to bring it to the attention of the community. We believe

that sexual violence shouldn’t be labeled strictly as a problem on college campuses, because there

exists much overlooked evidence that sexual violence occurs in high school as well.

We believe that education on the subject should start in high school to prevent further

occurrences while students are still in high school rather than waiting until college to recognize the

problem. As a part of our research we connected with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center

(NSVRC.) Their mission is to provide leadership in preventing and responding to sexual violence

through collaboration, sharing and creating resources, and promoting research. To assist the

NSVRC, the Blacksburg High School DECA chapter has organized a campaign called kNOw means

NO. With a variety of awareness events and media communication, BHS DECA plans to effectively

represent the NSVRC by raising awareness and communication about sexual violence as well as

raising funds to donate to NSVRC.

The topic of sexual violence covers different circumstances ranging from verbal to physical

abuse. Sexual violence is a big yet overlooked problem at Blacksburg High School, and several

II.CAMPAIGN THEME OR FOCUS

A. Statement and description of the issue to be addressed

B. Rationale for selecting the issue

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students we spoke to have been victims of both verbal and physical abuse. Sexual violence can occur

during school as well as in social settings amongst peers.

For example, Student A is a victim of verbal sexual

violence. Student A received a disturbing text message

(names have been changed) that reads, “Hey this is Joe

Happy Holidays, and all I want is to f*** your brains out.

Don’t even respond, just come over ready for the greatest

pleasure of your life.” Sadly, sexual violence extends past just verbal abuse at BHS.

As we began looking into sexual violence at BHS, we spoke with a close friend, and we were

shocked to discover something we didn’t know. She told us of a personal experience that helped

motivate us in our effort to bring awareness to this issue. We’ll call her student B, and she was

willing to tell us her story about how she was a victim of physical sexual violence in a social setting.

She tells us that she was physically assaulted by a close friend while at his house, and told us of the

pain this caused her; that she felt that she had no one to turn to, not even her friends, because she

thought that people would look down upon her. This student’s specific situation speaks volumes

about the severity of this issue in our school. The goal of our project is to bring light to this issue

and recognize that it’s happening while also educating students with facts to prevent further cases.

After reviewing student A and student B’s cases and discussing this issue with members of our

student body, we decided that it was time to #starttheconversation at Blacksburg High School.

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Our chapter chose our primary target

population to be BHS juniors and seniors, and our

secondary market as freshmen and sophomores as

well as BHS faculty, staff, and community.

To understand our school demographics, we must

first look at the make-up of our community.

There are approximately 43,609 people living in Blacksburg as of 2015 and 9.7 percent of

which are children between the ages of 0-18. This means that Blacksburg has approximately

4,230 children. We also noticed that Blacksburg’s Caucasian population is 84.39% with an

average household income of $51,810. This shows that Blacksburg is a higher income community

with low diversity. Within Blacksburg High School there are 257 seniors and 289 juniors as well

as 291 sophomores and 314 freshmen; the whole student body consists of 1,151 students. Since

we have a large student body and a heavy topic to present, we wanted our campaign to be

interactive as well as approachable. We aimed to make the project something the students

wanted to participate in as well as learn and become passionate about.

Print Media-Bruin News: The Bruin News is a student created and published

newspaper at Blacksburg High School. Once every month, the Bruin News is

C. Description of the target population

III. LOCAL MEDIA AND OTHER PROMOTIONAL POSSIBILITIES

A. A. Local print and broadcast media available

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delivered to every student at BHS. The newspaper covers various articles about

events in the high school as well as in the community.

Roanoke Times: Roanoke is the fifth largest metro area in the state of Virginia

(out of 15.) The Roanoke Times is the leading newspaper in the New River

Valley and the top source for news and information in Southwest Virginia. Each

week they have a circulation of over 40,000 papers and it is sold in over 1,500

locations.

Collegiate Times: The Collegiate Times is the oldest newspaper in Blacksburg,

founded in 1903. They print on Tuesdays and Fridays each week during the

academic year and distribute 8,000 copies in high-traffic locations all over

Virginia Tech campus.

News Messenger: The News Messenger is a twice-weekly newspaper serving

Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Montgomery County, Va., and Virginia Tech.

BHS School Messenger: Blacksburg High School School Messenger is an online

email service that is sent on an as-needed basis. When needed, a school

messenger is sent to every parent email, student email, and faculty email.

Broadcast Media-

Nash FM 107.1: Nash FM is a Cumulus broadcasting network for the New

River Valley. They broadcast 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

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K92: K92 is the most popular and widely listened to radio station in Southwest

Virginia. Most of their listeners are under the age of 24; therefore, they fall

under our primary as well as our secondary target markets.

WDBJ 7: WDBJ7 is the most watched local news station in Southwest and

Central Virginia. WDBJ7 serves 26 counties in Southwest and Central Virginia.

They are the CBS affiliate for areas including the Roanoke Valley, the Lynchburg

Area, the New River Valley, the Smith Mountain Lake area, Southside including

Martinsville, Danville, and the Alleghany Highlands.

WSLS 10: WSLS's award-winning team brings the news for the Roanoke-

Lynchburg market. WSLS 10 is the NBC affiliate serving Southwest, VA.

BHS School Announcements: Every morning at the beginning of school,

announcements are made over the intercom to inform the entire BHS student

body, faculty, and staff of important reminders and upcoming events.

District 3 Leadership Competition: An announcement was made at our

District 3 Leadership competition to inform our whole chapter as well as other

chapters in our district of our project and to get them involved.

In addition to the the print and broadcast media outlets, we utilized eight other promotional

activities to promote our campaign. These additional promotional activities further allowed us to

spread our message throughout Blacksburg High School and the school community.

B. Other possible promotional activities

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Hallway Bulletin Board:

Throughout a given school day there are over 1,150 students in the hallways of Blacksburg High

School. There are four main hallways at BHS that connect with one common hallway at the center.

We placed our posters in this central area to ensure that students would pass it various times.

Hallway TV Advertisements:

At BHS there are TVs in all of the hallways and common areas. We put advertisements about our

campaign on the TVs that ran on a loop all day long with other information about activities going on

at BHS. This form of advertising was ideal for our project because all students see the TV slides;

therefore, the information was distributed to both our primary and secondary target markets.

Classroom Presentations:

There are 35 senior and junior English classes, with an average of 25 students to a class.

Classroom presentations offer the unique opportunity of interacting with students on a more

personal level. By visiting all the junior and senior English classrooms, we were able to meet with

every single person in our primary target market. This allows the students to have the campaign

focus explained to them on a very personal level. This would provide the opportunity to get

feedback from the students and allow their questions to be answered. Student-driven messages

allow other students to respond positively and relate to the subject, and having fellow students

present the theme invited others to embrace it.

Social Media Outlets:

About 78% of high school students have smart phones according to recent research from Harvard

University. Twitter is quickly becoming one of the most prominent social media outlets amongst

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high school students, allowing for a continuous feed of live updates from people one follows. The

users only follow accounts they want to hear from, and people can post, “retweet,” or “like” others’

tweets. Facebook is still the most popular form of social media, with over 1 billion users; 98% of our

senior class is on Facebook. Facebook allows users to communicate with friends, organizations, and

pages that they like or are affiliated with. Organizations can post information, create events, and

send notifications to people who have “liked” or “joined” their page.

Movie Showing:

We held a movie showing of The Mask You Live In. It is a documentary

that follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to

themselves, while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity,

and how those standards of masculinity can lead to increased sexual

violence. The entire student body and community were encouraged to

attend, which allowed the opportunity for BHS students, faculty, staff,

and NRV community to come together and become further educated

about sexual violence and how it correlates to masculinity. The students and community would be

gathered together to discuss the theme of the project, which would then accommodate for a

question and answer session after the movie to talk about the film as well as any other questions

about the project, movie, or this issue at BHS.

White Out Basketball Game:

The White Out Basketball Game was a fundraiser for the NSVRC (National Sexual Violence

Resource Center) as well as an awareness event for our project. We declared the theme of a home

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basketball game “white out,” as a way to get students involved with our project. The whole student

section, as well as many of the parents, participated in the theme. We also had free admission to the

basketball game for those who attended the movie showing, hoping to collect money for the NSVRC.

At halftime we made an announcement to inform everyone in attendance of our project and to tell

them that there were donation jars for the NSVRC set up at the admissions booth and concessions.

Town Awareness Day:

As a way to involve our whole Blacksburg community, we sent an email to our mayor asking if

we could make this project bigger by creating a Town Awareness Day recognizing the prevention of

sexual violence. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard back from the mayor; however, we still plan on

implementing this portion of our campaign regardless of when we receive a response.

Marquee:

To advertise our movie showing, we had a message put on the digital marquee in front of our

school on a main road so that we could reach the members of our secondary target market who are

part of the BHS school community. This includes friends and family of BHS students who don’t

attend the high school.

Hallway Bulletin Board:

Our DECA chapter came together and created an eye-catching bulletin board that sits in the

common area of our school a main gathering point that every student will pass through at least once

every day. This location was the prime spot to place our bulletin board, because both our primary

and secondary target markets will be reached.

C. Media mix and rationale for media and other promotional activities

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Hallway TV Advertisements:

We utilized the TVs throughout our school as a form of advertisement for our project. The

slides on the TVs informed our peers of the mission of the project as well as gave them important

dates of our events. We kept the slides clean and simple but eye-catching so that reading them

while walking through the halls was easy for the students and faculty and got their attention at the

same time.

Classroom Presentations:

Our Blacksburg DECA chapter decided to visit every single junior and senior English class, as

well as several other miscellaneous classes (Government, AP environmental science, marketing) or

classes in which the teachers felt especially passionate about our project. In a period of ten minutes

we presented our project to each class, telling them why we chose this topic, showing them

statistics, and asking them to get involved in order to make a change in our school and community.

In total we reached 35 English classes and every student in our primary target market as well as a

good majority of students and faculty in our secondary target market.

Social Media Outlets:

In order to reach our target demographic

audience, we used specific social media outlets.

Our primary target market and a portion of our

secondary target market was reached through Twitter. Students at this age are most involved on

this social media, and by sending out tweets we could alert our followers of upcoming events and

important information surrounding the project. A portion of our secondary target market was

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reached through Facebook. Most of the faculty, staff, and BHS community is active on this social

media because of their age, therefore we found it to be fitting to reach them.

Movie Showing:

We decided that showing the award winning film The Mask You Live In would be beneficial for

our community to see, because it gives a different perspective on the issue of standards in society.

The film focuses on recognizing standards of masculinity that men are supposed to live up to in

today’s society and how this pressure leads to increased sexual violence. Our audience showed up

for the movie showing and everything was going as planned until the technology department alerted

us that the computer we had brought wasn’t compatible with the system, so we had to tell our

viewers of the situation and reschedule. However, the second time around we knew exactly what to

do and even had a larger audience.

Whiteout Basketball Game:

We dedicated a home basketball game to our project as well as used it as a fundraiser for the

NSVRC. The theme of the game was “whiteout,” and after advertising it on social media and

promoting it via word of mouth marketing, we had a large turnout of both parents and students all

of who participated in the theme. The basketball game was directly after our movie showing, so we

offered free admission to any students and parents who attended the movie and planned to attend

the game. We also had donation jars set up at the ticket booth and concessions, hoping that those

who got into the game for free would donate to our cause. There was an announcement made at

halftime to inform those in attendance of our project and what we were doing and urge them to

donate to a great cause.

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Town Awareness Day:

We are in contact with the town of Blacksburg about scheduling a town awareness day in

support of the prevention of sexual violence in our community. We believe that the awareness day

will be scheduled for sometime mid March.

Marquee:

To advertise our movie showing, we had a message put

on the digital marquee in front of our school on a main road

so that we could reach the members of our secondary target

market that are part of the BHS school community. This

includes friends and family of BHS students who don’t

attend the high school.

There were thirteen people who were the

powerhouse behind helping us create and carry out

our campaign. We wanted to involve as much of

Blacksburg High School by utilizing members from

our own DECA chapter, but also members from

other organizations within the BHS student body.

We aimed to have our message spread quickly and

impact as many students as possible. Each member

IV. CAMPAIGN ORGANIZATION AND IMPLEMENTATION A. Organizational chart, member involvement and job description

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of the team had specific responsibilities and goals. In working together, we were able to successfully

reach our primary and secondary target markets.

School Promotions Director:

Genty oversaw the creation of the hallway bulletin board and the TV

advertisements. He also worked with the school newspaper staff to share our

campaign with the student body.

Community Promotions Director: Jane Chadwick

Jane was in charge of finding volunteer students to help with the

classroom presentations. She was also in charge of public relations and media

attention for the presentations. Jane worked along side Austin Jones, our

student body representative to coordinate our efforts. Lastly she was in charge of collecting data to

prove that sexual violence awareness was necessary at Blacksburg High School.

School Events Director: Brayden Shushock

Brayden was in charge of running all the major school-wide events

such as the movie showing, basketball game, the presentation to

administration, and the implementation of the classroom presentations. He

worked with other school organizations to schedule and coordinate the

events with the school and the student body.

Social Media Director: Genna Porth

Genna was in charge of all social media for the campaign. She handled

our Twitter, insuring that our followers and student body were up to date on

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all the events and promotions through out the campaign. She drafted and scheduled her Tweets to

insure maximum potential reach. She sent out the link for our survey and answered questions

through our Twitter and Facebook.

Photography Specialist: Avery Stolte

Avery worked with the photography classes and students to take

pictures for documentation of our campaign. She helped with editing,

choosing angles for pictures, and deciding what photos would have the most

impact.

Technology Specialist: Lydia Modelyn

Lydia was the head coordinator for everything technology related in

our campaign. She worked with the theater department and the students in

charge of the sound box in the auditorium to ensure we had the correct lighting and set up for the

movie showing.

Classroom Presentation Manager: Marissa Wharton

Marissa approached the English teachers to inform them about the

future classroom presentations that the volunteers were going to be making.

She created the PowerPoint for the classroom presentations. Marissa managed

the list and was in charge of delivering the information to the students. She

also assisted in helping us find students who were willing to talk to us about their past experience

with sexual violence.

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Social Media Consultant: Hannah Altizer

Hannah worked along side Genna to manage the Twitter and Facebook

accounts. She helped to come up with our social media slogan

#starttheconversation, and she utilized her past DECA experiences in the VA

only event of Social Media to further the success of our social media outlets.

Assistant of Production: Meredith McCann

Meredith worked with Genty to decide when the best time would be to

publish our school news article, and she helped to design and set up the bulletin

boards and TV ads. Meredith was also in charge of the movie showing of The

Mask You Live In. She requested the auditorium, worked with Lydia in setting up

the sound booth, and worked on spreading the word about our showing. Meredith also requested

the rights for the movie so we could legally show it to a big group of people without infringing on

any copyrights.

Logo Producer: Andrea Shemeley

Andrea worked with design programs such as InDesign and Photoshop

to create a one-of-a-kind logo for our campaign. She took our campaign title

“kNOw means NO” and designed a logo that we then utilized on all aspects of

our campaign. She designed the logo in various formats so that we could use it

in any way we needed.

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Awareness Associate: Erin Hendershot

Erin helped to raise awareness throughout the student body for our campaign. She did this

by writing the announcements for the school intercom, talking about the project to

a variety people in the student body, and utilizing word-of-mouth marketing. She

also worked on contacting the Blacksburg Mayor in order to set up a town

awareness day. She sent emails to the mayor and his assistants hoping to hear a

response. She has not heard back yet from the mayor, but she plans to follow through with the

awareness day once she does even if it is after the project has stopped.

Whiteout Coordinator: Noah Rader

Noah was in charge of the whiteout basketball game and the fundraising

efforts at the game as well. He was in charge of contacting the Blacksburg High

School Athletic Director to gain permission for us to have a school-wide whiteout

effect the day of the game and to extend the theme to the basketball game as well.

He worked with the Principal, Mr. Kitts, to obtain permission to send out a school wide messenger

to students and their parents, giving notice about the game and informing them about our project.

Noah worked with the BHS boys’ varsity basketball coach to integrate our whiteout theme into the

game by having the players wear whiteout jerseys.

Student Body Representative: Austin Jones

Austin is a Student Body Officer at Blacksburg High School. He was our

contact with the student government association. He made sure that both DECA

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and the student government were aware of what was taking place and that they were both involved.

Administration Representative: Brian Kitts

Mr. Kitts was our representative from administration at Blacksburg

High School. He is our current Principal and was willing to help us in any

way possible by approving ideas, and getting school board approval for our

project etc. He helped us gather data to show that our project was necessary at BHS, and he helped

us to brainstorm ideas for the campaign so that every student would be involved and so that parents

would be aware. Genty worked along side Mr. Kitts so that things would run smoothly.

Faculty Representative: Eric Thomas

Mr. Thomas was our representative from faculty at Blacksburg High

School. He is a junior history teacher, meaning that he had contact with a

large portion of our primary target market. He was also especially passionate

about our mission and was willing to help us with anything we needed. He

announced the importance of our project to his classes, and he let his students volunteer for

classroom presentations.

Public Relations Associate: Leah Hendershot

Leah is a VA DECA Region 3 Vice President. She was in charge of the

district 3 Leadership Competition and allowed us to make an announcement

about our project at DLC, helping to spread the word about our mission to our

entire district. Leah also worked with Genty to gain publicity within our school

and community for our campaign. She informed the news stations, radio

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stations, and newspapers of our efforts, provided them with her contact information in case they had

any further questions, and she wrote various press releases.

Print Media

To increase the publicity for our project and our school’s involvement within the community, we

invited various media outlets to cover our movie showing and basketball game. On Friday, January

19th 2016, we held our showing of The Mask You Live In. We sent out invitations to various news

sources, we only got two responses. The Bruin News both online and print sources sent

representatives to the movie showing and basketball game. Their coverage included interviews with

Jane, Leah, and Brayden to discuss the progress of the event and the success so far, as well as why

we chose the topic, kNOw means NO. The News Messenger contacted one of our DECA members

through email and requested information and photographs from the event.

Broadcast Media

Our primary target market is juniors and seniors at Blacksburg High School who listen to the

radio regularly, watch the news, and are at school on a daily basis. Because of this we chose to also

implement a lot of broadcast media utilizing the local radio stations, news sources, and our own

school PDA system. We sent out requests for air time to four local radio stations and news stations.

We received three responses interested in our broadcast media. Nash FM, a local country station

released a public service announcement about our Awareness Week as well as the movie showing

and basketball game. The local NPR (National Public Radio) station also released a public service

about our event as well, including the activities and encouraging support. The on-air broadcast ran

B. Description of campaign and documentation

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for thirty days prior to our event, every day. WDBJ 7 also responded with interest in our project.

We were in contact with them through email, giving details and testimonies from our project, but

sadly we received no air time from them because a larger national news story broke out in our town.

Hallway Bulletin Board

To help promote our campaign, we chose to have a bulletin board in the main hallway of our

school. The board was created and made the Wednesday before the awareness week so that people

could anticipate upcoming events. The board utilized our logo, included our purpose and how to get

involved, and advertised all of our social media information.

TV Advertisements

To help show the school about our campaign we decided to have a TV slide that would run on a

continuous loop all day in the main hallway of our school. The board was created and made the

Wednesday before the awareness week so that people could anticipate the upcoming events

surrounding our project. The board utilized our logo, included our purpose, told students how to

get involved, and displayed all of our social media information. Including the TV slides in our

campaign was an important promotional move, because the TVs are something new and interesting

in our school, giving us the perfect opportunity to alert the

school of our project.

Social Media

We had two main sources of social media that we used for

this campaign: Twitter and Facebook. We felt that Twitter and

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Facebook were two forms of social media that would most effectively reach both our primary and

secondary target markets.

Twitter is a growing social media site that is being utilized by Montgomery County Public

Schools (MCPS) as a result of our new superintendent who wanted to create a Twitter account for

each school, club, and teacher in our county. Utilizing Twitter would help us to spread the word

about our campaign quickly and effectively as well as reach our primary target market. We reached

out to our Blacksburg High School twitter, Blacksburg High School Help Save the Next Girl Twitter,

and our local community Twitter “Blacksburg Stuff,” and asked them to retweet us and send out

their own Tweets about our events. All three Twitters we reached out to responded and helped us

spread the word. This helped to gain interest in our campaign as well as spread our hashtag

#starttheconverstaion.

Facebook is the primary source of social media used to target our secondary target market. We

utilized features within Facebook such as our BHS senior Facebook page to contact 100% of the

seniors and get them involved in the project. We created a Facebook page “kNOw means NO” and

added a majority of the BHS student body, families of BHS students, and the Blacksburg Community

to it. We reached out to fellow Facebookers and asked them to share and comment and like our

posts so that more of the community would see them as well.

To make our social media campaign more interactive, we had a group of students who

constantly watched our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Prior to and during the awareness week,

they would send out Tweets and posts, as well as answer and questions that anyone from the

community might have as well as comment on how it was going and what event was coming next.

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We also used our account to share shocking statistics and facts about sexual assault in teens and

high schools to show that it is a current problem in society as well as in Blacksburg High School.

Lastly, we linked a survey to our social media to gather information to show that our project was

necessary at Blacksburg High School.

Basketball Game/Movie Showing

To finish off our campaign, we wanted to have an event that

would bring in a large portion of our community. Blacksburg

DECA Chapter chose to host a movie showing and sponsor a

basketball game. We chose to show The Mask You Live In a

documentary about how boys and young men struggle to stay

true to themselves while negotiating America's narrow definition

of masculinity and how our standards of masculinity lead to increased cases of sexual violence.

Originally, we reserved the auditorium and our supporters showed up on time only to find out that

the computer we brought to show the movie on wasn’t compatible with our school’s system, and

ultimately we weren’t able to show the movie on that date, but we immediately rescheduled. We

reserved the auditorium for 5pm two Fridays later and showed the movie to over fifty people. Before

the movie began, we did an activity through the “No More” campaign, in which we passed out

sheets of paper that said “No More,” and attendees were instructed to write why they would no

longer tolerate sexual violence. We served dinner and refreshments as well.

Directly after the movie showing, we sponsored a home Blacksburg High School Bruins

basketball game. Through our various social media outlets, we shared that the theme of the game

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would be whiteout to support and draw attention to preventing sexual violence as well as bring

attention to our fundraiser for the NSVRC. All of the student section, and most of the crowd

participated in the whiteout theme and contributed to our project. The Bruins Basketball team also

wore white jerseys to represent our project as well.

Classroom Presentations

To kick off our campaign we gathered students from BHS DECA and other school groups. We

tried to include a wide variety of responsible students from all the clubs and sports teams at

Blacksburg High School so that we could appeal to as may students as possible. We removed the

students from class to prepare them for their presentations and instructed each presenter on how to

show the information to the classes. Each presentation started with the students introducing

themselves with the “kNOw means NO” logo on the screen.

They told the students that the “kNOw means NO”

campaign was a DECA public relations project and further

explained what both of those things meant. Then the

presenter told them of the intention of the project and that

“kNOw means NO” aims to educate BHS students and faculty

about sexual assault, alert them of how prevalent it is in Blacksburg High School, and prevent

further occurrences. They then shared with the students all of the activities that our campaign was

implementing and how everyone could get involved. Presenters shared shocking facts about sexual

assault cases in high schools nationally, and three specific instances of sexual assault among a small

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group of friends at BHS. The presentation encouraged students and faculty to come to the movie

showing and the basketball game to support the campaign and to create awareness.

The intent of the classroom presentations was to reach our whole primary target market by

presenting to all junior and senior English classes, and reach a good majority of our secondary target

market through other miscellaneous classes such as marketing, both of which we accomplished.

Print Media

The school paper “The Bruin News” is delivered once a month to English classrooms. The

paper is also available to students and parents online. We worked with the newspaper classes to

advertise for our campaign in both the print and online resources. The Bruin News has an estimated

reach of 1500. The article had details about our campaign, its theme and the activities we completed.

Broadcast Media

The intercom announcements, NASH FM PSA, and the DLC District Three Leadership

Conference had an estimated reach of 61,875 and an estimated impression of 434,150. The BHS

school announcements had an estimated reach of 1,300 and an estimated impression 13,000. They

ran daily for two weeks every morning throughout the entire school. NASH FM radio station Public

Service announcement had an estimated reach of 60,000 and an estimated impression of 420,000.

We estimated that the listeners would hear the PSA at least once a day, and hear it daily for the

duration of the week it was played. The District Three Leadership conference had an estimated

reach of 575 DECA members and judges and an estimated impact of 1,150. We had two

announcements to the entire conference about our project.

C. Estimated impact on the target population

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Hallway Bulletin Board

Our poster had an estimated reach of 2,000. There was an estimated impression of 72,600.

The poster was placed in the major common area that every student must pass to enter and exit

school and well as pass to get to and come back from lunch. Also, during the duration of the week

when our poster was up, our school had a night where all the 8th graders and their parents came to

tour BHS. So those students and their parents increased our impressions and reach. We chose this

location because it allowed our poster to have the maximum possible exposure. The design and the

coloring of the poster was easily identifiable with our project.

TV Advertisements

The advertisements that we had in our school had an estimated reach of 1,300 people and an

estimated impression of 52,000. There are four TVs that students pass everyday that had our

advertisements on them, and the ads ran for a total of two school weeks. The TVs are placed in

common areas, the lunch room, and near the entrances and exits of school.

Social Media

1.Facebook-Our official “kNOw means NO” account had several posts updating students on the

progress of the campaign. This page had an estimated reach of 600 people and an estimated

impression of 1,800 people. By utilizing the “Senior Class of 2016” page where every single senior is

a part of it, and making posts on the page, we were able to reach 257 people with an estimated

impression 771.

2.Twitter-Our Twitter page had an estimated reach of 15,700 people and an estimated

impression of 31,400. Our page had 316 followers, but most of our reach and impressions came

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from big local accounts Tweeting to our account and Tweeting about our campaign and event. We

had several people from the community Tweet to our account and discuss our project and their

opinions about it. Our Twitter campaign was a huge success.


The basketball game and movie showing had an estimated reach of 450 people and an

estimated impression of 450 people. We were able to show the movie to a variety of students,

faculty and the Blacksburg community. We promoted our message and educated the attendees

about sexual assault and how the idea masculinity is a problem in our society today. At the

basketball game we shared with the entire audience the purpose of our campaign, the whiteout

theme and that we were collecting donations for the NSVRC.

Class Presentations

The classroom presentations had an estimated reach of 875 and an estimated impression of

1750. During the presentation the presenters informed the classes about the project and all of its

activities and the students were able to discuss their questions and opinions about the campaign.

We reached every single junior and senior classroom when doing our presentation. We were able to

talk to students about a sensitive subject on a more personal level that made the topic more easily

understood, and opened up the topic for conversation.

Hallway Bulletin Board and TV Advertisements

The poster and the TV ads that were created by BHS DECA and the digital media classes were

V. EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS A. Evaluation of the process

27

one of the most effective ways that promoted our campaign.

Our posters and TV slides were noticeable compared to

others around the school. We noticed that students stopped

on their way to class to read the board and the TVs, and

then they discussed them amongst their friends.

Social Media

The BHS DECA chapter used two major sources of social media, and they turned out to be

the most successful form of promotion for our campaign. We used Twitter and Facebook and

through those two sources alone reached 99% of our primary target population and 80% of our

secondary target population.


The basketball game and movie showing enabled us to involve a variety of students, faculty,

and members of the community. We were able to educate people about the current problem of

sexual assault at BHS and inform them of our project. The movie showed people that our culture’s

expectations put exceptional standards on boys and men and that the focus on masculinity may lead

to increased violence and sexual violence. The basketball game was a fun way to create awareness

and allow the community to feel like they were a part of the campaign and the fundraising.

Class Presentations

Blacksburg High School DECA incorporated the whole school successfully and reached 100%

of our primary target market through our class presentations. We were able to introduce our

campaign to students in a personal environment that allowed us to connect with the students more

28

than many other campaigns had done. It also allowed for the students to give us feedback and share

their reactions, thoughts, and feelings.

After completing our campaign, the Blacksburg DECA Chapter felt we had an overall positive

reaction and result. There were things we could have improved, but we felt the campaign was more

successful because we took a semi-personal approach to a sensitive subject and allowed students to

react, rather than taking a traditional “hands off” approach to the public relations project.

1. Our first recommendation is to utilize more resources to increase involvement from the local

community. Use a variety of different outlets such as posting things around the local community,

going to local schools and businesses, and talking to impactful community members. This will

enable the entire community to be more involved throughout the campaign.

2. The second recommendation the group would like to give is to be passionate. "You have to be

burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate

enough from the start, you'll never stick it out."- Steve Jobs. The main group of DECA students were

passionate about solving the problem of sexual assault in high schools and some were able to

connect on a personal level because they were victims themselves. But other members did not

recognize its importance or connect to it on a personal level. We believe that if every member was

as passionate as the group of students who connected with the topic then the campaign would have

had a more meaningful impact.

3. Our group would like to recommend that the theme of the campaign should be presented with

some prior knowledge. Although the class presentations worked as a way to present our ideas, the

B. Recommendations for future campaigns

29

presenters could have been more educated about the history and facts of sexual assault in high

schools. A video or introduction to the subject of the campaign as well as the campaign plan would

lead to a more successful campaign.

4. The BHS DECA Chapter would also recommend creating a scheduled calendar of events for the

project. If every participating member had a final event schedule, the students would be better

organized, on task, and have a greater knowledge of when everything was happening. The leaders of

our campaign shared the events with the participating members a day or two before they were

happening; if each member had a full schedule they would be better equipped with the knowledge of

our campaign and better able to answer the time-related questions regarding the campaign.

5. Finally, the last recommendation that Blacksburg High School DECA has is to work with

outside sources to expand the campaign. This January we were approached by a member of Student

Affairs at Virginia Tech and several graduate students interested in social justice studies in high

schools and asked to expand our campaign to Virginia Tech and Radford College campuses. There

will be meetings to discuss the problem with faculty from both schools and BHS DECA members

that participated in the project. Together we are developing a campaign that will include college

education of this problem, as well as participation in future campaigns. The new partnership

between Virginia Tech, Radford University, and Blacksburg High School DECA helped us to expand

our campaign not only through out our school but to 42,000 local college students.

30

1. "Statistics | RAINN | Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network." Statistics | RAINN |

Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.

2. "National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) |." National Sexual Violence Resource

Center (NSVRC) |. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.

3. "Sexual Assault Prevention." Sexual Assault Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.

4. "Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Website." Facts and Statistics. N.p., n.d. Web. 09

Feb. 2016.

5. "Home - NOMORE.org | Together We Can End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault."

Together We Can End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Feb.

2016.

6. "Town of Blacksburg, VA : Home." Town of Blacksburg, VA : Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 09

Feb. 2016.

VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY

FINAL WRITTEN EVENT

Documents