In December 2010, AIDS Calgary Awareness Association began the process of developing a gay men’s social marketing campaign. Gay men still make up approximately 35% of new HIV infections in Alberta(1), our agency recognizes we have a responsibility to ensure that gay men understand how to prevent contracting HIV and that addressing HIV related issues remain amongst some of our top priorities.
The process
We started our campaign process by engaging a University Without Walls student to conduct a literature review. Before beginning the creation of our campaign we reviewed research regarding social marketing best practices for gay men in North America. Once the report was compiled with recommendations, we assembled an advisory committee. It is very important to our agency that our work is informed by the community. It was imperative to this project to ensure we heard the voices of the gay men in our community in order to create a successful campaign that truly speaks to gay men.
Our advisory committee consisted of members of the gay community and staff of AIDS Calgary. This committee helped to guide our campaign process. Following the literature review recommendations, we created a survey centered on what kind of safer sex messaging gay men would most connect to. Our survey had an overwhelming response from over 190 participants, with responses from gay men age ranged from 15 – 69. The majority of respondents said the most important message to convey was the use of safer sex materials, and the use of male models vs. real people were almost tied for responses.
Based on the information we received from the survey we then came up with design concepts with an external graphic designer, and tested the prototypes where members of the gay community provided us with constructive feedback. Both focus groups provided diverse feedback as the participants, much like our survey, ranged in age and background. After compiling all of our data from the literary review, community survey and our focus groups, we were able to create our campaign.
The launch
As the Calgary Pride week begins today (September 1st – 11th) we have reached the final stage of our campaign development; the launch. AIDS Calgary is excited to announce the final launch of our gay men’s social marketing campaign. “How does safety make you sexy?” features three different sexy-safety tips derived from the community based research and literary review. Members of the gay community were recruited to model for the campaign for a more down to earth look. The excellent material we received from our surveys and our focus group lead us to believe that there was a lot to say around safer sex practices in the gay men’s community. So we’d like to keep the conversation open by asking the community what are your “sexy-safety” tips? We’ve created a blog at http://sexysafety.wordpress.com/ where we’d like to hear how you make safety sexy, share your insight with your community!
AIDS Calgary would like to thank all of our survey and focus group participants. We would also like to extend a special thanks to our committee for working so passionately and diligently on such an important project.
References
1. HIV and AIDS in Canada: Surveillance Report to December 31, 2009, Public Health Agency of Canada (2010), http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/aids-sida/publication/survreport/2009/dec/pdf/2009-Report-Rapport.pdf
0 comments:
Post a Comment