Trekstock Evaluation

I began this project by looking at what Trekstock does and its target audience. I also looked at their competition and what campaigns they do to raise money and also what kind of adverts they do. After I had done this I began thinking of what sort of campaign I should create for Treckstock after looking at my research.

I decided to focus on a more metaphorical concept. My initial thought was about testicular cancer because not only does it not get much publicity like breast cancer, but I also thought that men don’t really like talking about if they have a problem or even acknowledging a problem.

I decided to focus on doing a poster for this campaign. For this I wanted to make it eye catching and bold so it would stand out and catch the attention of the target audience. My initial concept was to focus on balls and nuts, because they are what men call their testicles. I had two ideas of what I was going to shoot. My first idea was to have one ‘good’ ball which would be green and perfectly round and one ‘bad’ ball which would be red and distorted with lumps and bumps. My second idea was to do a series of photos using a traffic light effect. The first photo of the series would be two green balls, second would be a green ball and a yellow one representing the first stage, third would be a green ball and an orange one representing the second stage, the fourth photograph in the series would be a green ball and a red one which is the third stage and the final photograph would just be a green ball on its own – meaning that the unhealthy ball had been removed.

I wanted to shoot both these ideas to see which one had the best outcome. For my second idea I developed it by doing a few shoots like this. The first one was basic and I just used plain balls without anything added to them. For the second shoot I decided to draw on the ‘bad’ balls and cartoon and show the development of the cancer on each ball. I did a similar thing with my third shoot but instead of drawing on the balls I used different coloured clay to document the development. For the final shoot I decided to burn the balls to make it more graphic and eye catching. I burnt the balls and then added blue parts to it to highlight the cancerous parts. The final shoot was the most successful and this is the one I decided to use.

However, I then started to think what would make my campaign 360. I thought my campaign might have been to raw so thought about ways of lightning it up. I looked at different types of cancers and thought about ways to photograph them, again keeping to my original concept of using metaphorical images. For my final images I decided to focus on 5 different types of cancer – eye, breast, testicular, ovarian, bowel and lung. Each photograph was shot in a different location or a different setting to make each poster different. For ovarian cancer I decided to use fried eggs one good and one bad again. For bowel I used a whoopee cushion on an antique chair because most of the people who get bowel cancer are older people. For breast, I used cherry bakewells – one with a bite out of it. For testicular I used one of my previous shoots. For eye cancer I used sunglasses with plasters over it and for lung cancer I used balloons, one pink for healthy and one black for the cancerous one.

After I had finished my researching of the different charities out there I began to think of different concepts for my campaign.

I decided to focus on a more metaphorical concept. My initial thought was about testicular cancer because not only does it not get much publicity like breast cancer, but I also thought that men don’t really like talking about if they have a problem or even acknowledging a problem. I chose to focus on doing a poster for this campaign. For this I wanted to make it eye catching and bold so it would stand out and catch the attention of the target audience.

I began by researching Trekstock and seeing who their target audience is and what kind of things they do for their charity.

Then, I went onto researching their competitors and doing the same thing. A couple of the ones I looked at were specific to different types of cancer – for example Orchid – where as others – such as Cancer Research UK – were involved in pretty much every type of cancer out there.

Trekstock is a cancer charity who focuses on helping young adults who have cancer and also helps them after they have had it. They do fundraisers, collaborations and many more things to do to help raise money to “help ensure that no young person has to face cancer alone”.