NHS – more than skin deep

A feminine, soft, accessible and soothing campaign has hit the streets, buses, airwaves and internet because letters from the NHS encouraging us to look after our health just don’t ‘reach’ some.

So how do you change the behaviour of poorly educated 18-28 year old women in Dudley who are not booking smear tests in numbers?

ORB were bought in to interrupt this pattern, to change negative perceptions and myths of cervical screening and, more importantly, drive behaviour change and increase screening attendance.

The challenge was to educate, inform and motivate a diverse audience that feels the invincibility of youth, does not value health and is too busy socialising to book a test.

We used research and analytics to define the tone; focus groups to select the preferred creative; and incisive thinking to create the strategy. We used our extensive knowledge of the target youth audience to launch a multi-channel campaign – including poster advertising, radio adverts, a Facebook campaign, a roadshow and online microsite.

The success speaks for itself. Research from independent research body Public Knowledge shows that:

• Self-reported screening attendance had risen significantly at the post stage from 58% at the pre stage to 76% of all women interviewed – a significant increase of 18%.
• 55% of those interviewed had visual or audio recall of the campaign. (The highest recall that the researchers had seen – so outstanding in fact, that they are using this campaign case study for a white paper.)

NHS Dudley extended a two-month pilot campaign to four and due to the success of the campaign plans are in place to re-run it with developments early in 2013.

Visit morethanskindeep.org.uk to see the campaign microsite