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On the face of it, disease awareness may seem a straightforward exercise: you have a particular health condition and want to educate people on it. Generally, anywhere it’s shared – web, social media, billboard – it’s likely to be seen by people. Job done, then? Not quite.
In reality, public health promotion isn’t clear cut. It’s not just a case of putting your message in front of people – you need to reach the right people, in the right way. In some cases, you might even be speaking to friends, relatives and colleagues of sufferers or those at risk.
We ran a creative challenge at Onyx Health, splitting the team into groups and asking them to conceptualise a disease awareness campaign that considers who its audience is, where you find them and how you speak to them.
The imagery and materials contained are concepts only and were not created in collaboration with BrewDog or ANDYSMANCLUB.
Our creatives were asked to devise a campaign that highlighted and tackled a health issue faced by men. In terms of how the teams addressed that, it was down to them – providing the target audience and key messages were identified and reflected in the supporting materials. The teams had one day to come up with their proposals.
Here’s how they did it.
The first half of the day was dedicated to research. The teams brainstormed health needs and conditions, from erectile dysfunction to body dysmorphia, before considering the associated stereotypes, stigmas and stories of sufferers.
This deeper thought helped the teams discuss how each of the health needs might be visualised in a disease awareness campaign and then decide which of the conditions they’d proceed with.
The latter part of the morning was spent planning – campaign branding, what materials and content were needed, preferred collaborators and the like. A role was then agreed for each team member to get stuck into after the lunch break, making use of the individual specialisms in design, copywriting, pitching and other.
Pulling from the morning’s initial research, the content creation was targeted in terms of format and audience. Those looking at health conditions most prevalent in young adults, for example, focused on social posts for TikTok in particular, as we know this is where younger audiences spend a lot of time.
On the other hand, one team looking at erectile dysfunction instead focused their efforts on out-of-home advertising – as social media use within this target audience is much lower.
Our teams created everything from headlines and slogans to mock marketing materials and even fake products that could accompany the campaigns. As with almost any marketing project, there were hiccups along the way, such as the limited time restricting design resource, but the teams prioritised the most crucial elements of their campaign to ensure the end product stuck to the brief.
Each team created a presentation that outlined the research, planning and execution of their campaign. Their audience was a panel of Onyx Health directors that judged based on the below factors. This is also how we quality assure our client campaigns, to keep us consistent and on brief:
While all the campaigns were well thought out, tying into relevant topics with clear calls to action, one in particular stood out to our panel of judges.
The ‘Unhappy Hour’ aimed to get guys together in the familiar setting of a pub to highlight and tackle mental health issues affecting them. As an alternative to suffering in silence, the concept paired BrewDog, a pub chain built on ‘Beer, People and Planet’, with men’s suicide prevention charity ANDYSMANCLUB.
Running 7-8pm every Monday, as part of the existing ANDYSMANCLUB meetings, the event would serve up alcohol-free beers to encourage clear heads to clink glasses in open and honest discussion on men’s mental wellbeing.
Every sip of the non-alcoholic drinks served at the event, including an exclusive Unhappy Hour beer, would support ANDYSMANCLUB and its mission to provide a safe space for men to talk openly about their mental health, with proceeds going direct to the charity. Even the choice of pub partner was considered, as BrewDog has trained more than 200 Mental Health First Aiders across its business – equivalent to two per bar.
Featuring hard-hitting stats on suicide and the ‘Don’t hide it, highlight it’ strapline, the concept came loaded with branded assets for placement in BrewDog branches and across social platforms like Facebook and X, where research shows a lot of the target audience spends its time. A supporting webpage signposts ANDYSMANCLUB resources and a BrewDog branch finder.
Caroline Allard, Onyx Health’s Head of Client Planning and Strategy commented: “We were impressed by the execution of the Unhappy Hour concept, with a clear communication plan and digital strategy for tackling stigmas around men’s mental health. There was also a clever use of promotional materials and merchandise displaying the campaign branding and strapline.”
Our Managing Director, Trevor Pill, added: “While all teams came up with creative concepts and innovative ways of raising awareness and signposting support for their topics, the Unhappy Hour campaign could be an overarching initiative that covers them all.
“As it tackles unhappiness, which can result from any of the topics covered, such as body dysmorphia and ED, this is a campaign that can raise awareness of all the men’s health needs we looked at. If we can come up with these concepts and create a marketing plan for each in just one day, imagine what we can do for clients with greater resource!”
If you work for a healthcare charity or company in need of help with your content, we’re keen to collaborate on creative campaigns to support public health promotion. Drop us a line through our online enquiry form and we’ll have a chat.