MTV says the campaign is an innovative, multi-platform initiative challenging youth to publicly share something they feel strongly about. The 360 MTV Program, which includes digital, on-air, mobile, and on-the-ground elements, uses technology to encourage youth to “declare” statements about themselves on a special HP-branded micro-site for their peers to see.
MTV has created an online forum with HP at www.HPdeclare.mtv.com where youth can state their goals and ambitions and feed off of each other’s positive messages to help shape their declarations. MTV’s vast reach will extend the “Declare Yourself with HP” campaign far beyond advertising and into the lives of its participants. Youth will engage first with the website by making a declaration, then with their peers by reading and sharing their statements, and finally they can become part of a larger social movement urging their peers to take a stand and make a statement.
The “Declare Yourself” campaign started with MTV filming students making positive statements and encouraging them to make their declarations online. These initial declarations became part of a larger social movement, as youth participation coupled with MTV’s internal research solidified the notion that youth want to be heard, they want to have a voice, and they want to hear what others are saying.
Other core “Declare Yourself with HP” elements include a text-to-air conversation where MTV will engage viewers and enable them to announce their declarations over custom HP summer vignettes created by MTV during the station’s “Summer Sunblock” programming. This programming features regular on-air throws to the hub, an HP notebook PC giveaway for a lucky in-studio fan during MTV’s daily “It’s On with Alexa Chung” show, and an on-air texting experience for “Summer Sunblock”; as well as on-the-ground engagement with concert-goers with a text screen declaration sweepstakes and custom HP activation.
MTV Networks Digital has insight into the youth demographic (their main consumers) through MTVN Digital’s MyVoice, a panel of 15,000 that allows them to tap into the MTV audience by hosting online discussions and detailed surveys. Access to this panel confirmed the “Declare Yourself with HP” campaign would resonate with the target demographic, as “over 88% feel it’s important they make their voices heard to their friends and the world,” according to a recent MyVoice survey.
HP and Digital Fusion have collaborated to build several marketing elements including a homepage takeover of MTV.com with interactive declaration-entry capability, standard in-banner text media, “polite” banners that immediately populate the banner with one’s declaration, and of course the Declare Yourself hub where all the declarations will live and multiply in real time.
