February Awareness Campaign - Week One and Two

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Progress Update

In the first week of our February Awareness Campaign, approximately 1000 business cards were distributed. As you can see from the photos below, some cards were distributed on billboards, others in parking lots, and others in random places like bathroom mirrors, on drinking fountains, and so on. In the second week, cards were distributed in other creative places, but in smaller numbers. Larger numbers of cards will be distributed again in weeks three and four.

We are trying to reach people in different places to see if some places are more effective than others. Also, we suspect that some people will need to see our advertisements several times before they act on them, so we're not shocked that there hasn't been more response yet. In the third and fourth week we expect to distribute several thousand more cards, and it is certain that our Awareness Campaign will continue beyond the end of February at roughly the same pace.

The pictures below are intended to demonstrate that our Awareness Campaign is underway; that work is being done in the real world as well as online. We believe that this sort of demonstration is essential. Doug: I would have posted about progress sooner, but the past few weeks have been very busy. First, with actually distributing the cards and preparing for future distribution, and then with my studies. In addition to my work with the Campaign Against Aging I'm taking a heavy course load in college to prepare for working directly in the fight against aging.

We are watching the Awareness Campaign Progress Measurements and we did see a small jump in traffic in the Sacramento area after distributing the bulk of the cards (cards were distributed on other days that have not yet been updated). Although we weren't expecting a huge spike from our early efforts, and expect that multiple advertisements will be required to generate interest, we are also adapting to the feedback we're getting.

The experience of distributing these cards suggests that taking 5 to 10 minutes to explain the mission of the Campaign Against Aging to people before distributing cards to them may be more effective than shorter introductions, and that distributing to the person may be more effective than distributing onto cars. It's still too early to evaluate the larger trends, but that's my gut feeling. We also don't have enough data to say whether distributing in other ways is as good as or superior to talking to people in person.

Whether one way or another is better is ultimately determined by how many new members we get per hour (or dollar equivalent) of volunteers' distribution time. Distributing cards onto cars does not get us many visitors per card, but it takes less time than the other option of 5 to 10 minutes of discussion per small group, so that may make up for that. Another reason we're using the car distribution method is, even if they don't go to our website, they are being exposed to the idea, which we can build on in the coming months.

Personally, I'm going to shift over to the "medium length discussion" approach to distribution, for the most part. I want to experiment with different ways of introducing people to the idea of life extension and also spend enough time with this approach to be able to gauge it's effectiveness. I spent some time last week getting materials I think will improve my effectiveness while using this approach. I will post another update in a week or two with more photos.

If you're interested in volunteering to distribute cards and flyers, or volunteering in other ways, let us know.

Pictures

You can also see these pictures on our Flickr account if you cannot see the slideshow below. There is also a full screen version of this slideshow there.
In the car pictures, look for the cards on the drivers' side window.

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