SkillCity London 2005 was the UK’s biggest ever national interactive careers and training event and encouraged visitors aged between 12 and 30 years old to find out more about the wealth of skills-based career opportunities that vocational training has to offer. Visitors were offered the chance to experience and ‘have a go’ at a range of skills, see the best of the UK’s practitioners in action, speak to experts, celebrities and VIPs about their career choices and obtain advice and information on jobs and careers across a range of industry sectors.
he objective of the broadcast campaign was to raise awareness of Skill City 2005 and to drive traffic to both the event itself and the website, www.skillcity.org.uk in order to increase the status of vocational and learning careers across the UK. The challenge was to effectively reach a number of separate target audiences whilst also making best use of limited time with the spokesperson, Fame Academy's David Grant.
It was decided that the most impactful strategy was to run two online webchats back to back as this would allow us to maximise the reach amongst each audience, minimise wastage and drive traffic directly back to the Skill City website for those who wanted to find out more. The first webchat was targeted at those who would be attending the event themselves whilst the second was aimed at parents who could influence their children's decisions on whether or not to pursue a vocational career. David was tremendous! Already renowned for his work as a vocal coach on Fame Academy, he was well aware of the importance of strong vocational skills. He said that “As a vocal coach I am always encouraging others to perfect their skills, so it is an absolute delight to be involved with Skill City, an event that supports people interested in learning skills and achieving excellence in their skill area”.
The webchats were hosted at www.webchats.tv and syndicated to a further 18 sites which, between them, encompassed all of the identified audience groups. For example, parenting sites (Family Rapp, Parents and Kids, Parentscentre and Parentline), sites specifically for entrepreneurs (London Innovation), major ISPs and Portals (Lycos and Tiscali), educational sites (Education.guardian.co.uk and Teachernet), lifestyle sites (the Big City Network of radio station websites) and finally, those sites aimed at students and teenagers (including Funky; Hero; Teentalk Central; Teen Today; The Real You and Wicked Colours).