The Scottish Government has launched a new, station-wide campaign on STV for Additional Support for Learning.

The campaign was planned, managed and negotiated by MediaCom Edinburgh to run across STV commercial airtime and on stv.tv. The TV campaign features four advertising treatments, produced by STV Creative and directed by Evonne O’Rourke, all voiced by Taggart star Blythe Duff.
 
The first treatment – called Divorce – will air on STV from today until 15 November, and a further three will air in December, January and March, all highlighting different issues that could affect a child's learning.
 
STV’s dedicated campaign microsite – stv.tv/justask – also goes live today and features information about Additional Support for Learning. In addition, STV's daily live show The Hour will run special features to coincide with each campaign burst, to prompt wider discussions on the issues that could affect a child's learning.
 
Laura Curran, senior marketing manager, Scottish Government, said: “Some children may not be reaching their full potential due to a diverse range of issues and the situations affecting their learning. Additional Support can help. It was important for us to be able to communicate as many of these issues as possible. By working with STV and MediaCom this allowed us to give parents examples of how and when they could access support that could benefit their child.”
 
Ellie Caddell, STV’s promotions manager, said: “This is an extremely exciting partnership for us, which demonstrates STV’s unique ability in Scotland to provide a fully integrated and tailored campaign that goes well beyond the conventions of traditional spot advertising.”
 
For more information about the Additional Support for Learning campaign, see www.stv.tv/justask

Updated: A spokesperson for the Scottish Government explained STV's involvement in the creative development of the campaign without being on the Scottish Government's creative roster, saying: "Mediacom was briefed by the Scottish Government to deliver a pan-Scottish audience to communicate the ASL message. Mediacom issued a brief to Scottish media owners and analysed the responses. SG was advised by Mediacom that the best solution to meet the campaigns objectives came from STV in the form of an integrated station promotion. This integrated station promotion consists of infomercials, featuring both SG logo and STV logo together on-screen, with primary call to action to a stv microsite."

The spokesperson continued to explain that the distinction for infomercials versus standard adverts is that the campaign message is being presented to the audience jointly by the media owner (STV) and client (Scot Govt) in partnership, with the main call to action to a stv online website, as opposed to a Govt site. "Therefore, the message is being presented in a 'promotional context' rather than 'brand context'. This is a bespoke solution endorsed by STV and therefore the creative was provided by STV with the SG’s creative team - in this case the Leith agency - cooperation."