What goes around comes around. That’s what 95 percent of 18-24 year olds believe, according to a nationwide study conducted by the Ad Council and Lightspeed Research in March. The majority also believe in karma and they are more likely to attribute the positive experiences in their lives to their positive behaviors as opposed to having good luck. Additionally, approximately one in four young adults surveyed had volunteered in the past month and more than half cited a reason for getting involved as “good things come to those who help others.”
So to promote civic engagement, the Ad Council, in partnership with the Federal Voting Assistance Program and WestWayne, Atlanta, have created an interactive website focusing on the idea of karma.
The site, www.getgoodkarma.org, introduces visitors to an animated world called Karmalot, which features activities and mini-games where visitors are rewarded for their actions. The design is fun and fresh and the navigation is easy to follow. You can click on a map to see the layout of Karmalot as you move along or use a menu at the top of the page to quickly get from one point to the next no matter what part of the Karmalot world you’re in. You can also save your progress at any point and send the site to a friend.
While exploring Karmalot, volunteering, registering to vote and random acts of kindness can improve the visitor’s karma score, while points are deducted for inactivity and disengagement. For example, a hidden link in one of the clouds in the opening setting of Karmalot directs users to www.unitedway.org where they can discover opportunities to get more involved in their communities and pick up 30 karma points. Simply flipping an upside down turtle right side up along the way will also be rewarded. A mini-game also involves helping a turtle in another way–users are asked to help their turtle friend get her egg back to her nest across the river. But if you do things like refuse to assist a goat, some karma points will disappear. There’s also a chance to test your karmic health by answering a series of questions and challenges.
Entertain and educate
Along with the fun and games is a Get Involved section young people can go directly to without exploring Karmalot. It connects them to information about voting and volunteering and links to major news sites to help them keep up to date on what’s going on in the world. There’s also a sample letter to help them write to their politicians about issues they are concerned about. Of course as they consume any of this information, their karma points continue to go up. “The goal of the site is to entertain and educate. It doesn’t do you any good if they just stay there to play, you ultimately need to educate. The education comes in the form of the value of getting involved in volunteering and the value of registering to vote. Ultimately the client is the Federal Voting Assistance Program. Their whole goal was to get more young adults to vote and register and hopefully have a lifetime of voting habits,” explained Will Thomason, WestWayne executive VP/group account director. He added that since this is an off election year, they had expanded the issue beyond voting help keep young people engaged.
“What makes this site unique and great is the karma aspect, where you can watch your score go up if you do good things,” related Thomason. “The majority of things that increase your score are the hidden links such as www.unitedway.org or the other volunteer sites that are woven in there. When you click on those, you automatically get karma points. I think to really achieve the higher scores of the game you have to go through at least 70 percent of the links; so we feel excited that we have really found a way to educate and have fun at the same time.”
The PSAs that direct traffic to the site and that are also featured on the site have a lighter side to them as well. They use humor to communicate that acting on what is important to people will protect them from having bad karma. The unfortunate people in the PSAs have done not-so-good deeds and the results are not pleasant–one guy has sprouted an extra set of arms, while another is being followed by a swarm of locusts. They both end with the tagline, “Stay on the universe’s good side. Volunteer. Vote. Get Involved.”
“Our new PSAs and interactive website aim to encourage and empower 18 to 24 year olds to become more involved in their communities by volunteering, voting or just learning more about current events. The campaign is entertaining and compelling–I believe it will engage young adults throughout the country,” said Polli Brunelli, director, Federal Voting Assistance Program.
