The It Starts With Me campaign provides targeted HIV health promotion to men who have sex with men (MSM) and black African (BA) groups.
The primary objective is to increase the level of testing among MSM and BA, reduce undiagnosed and late diagnoses, reduce new HIV infections, promote HIV testing and encourage the use of condoms.
In 2016, the public information campaign was refreshed to increase empathy and emotional engagement by highlighting people’s personal stories in the context of their living environment.
Evaluation of the campaign was conducted by Kantar Public in December 2016, following the spike in campaign activity associated with National HIV Testing Week in late November. Two online surveys, one among each of MSM and BA, were conducted.
The evaluation found that:
- There continues to be a high level of awareness of the campaign and other HIV prevention materials, particularly among MSM.
- The refreshed campaign has been successful in increasing emotional engagement and empathy, and has increased the normalisation of being tested.
- While the main message taken from the campaign continues to be ‘get tested’ this year, more MSM in particular also took a ‘take responsibility’ message from the ads.
- Knowledge of the need for testing is high, as is the level of reported testing. As a result, the campaign can continue to move beyond the singular testing message and maintain that greater emphasis on responsibility and other supporting messages.
Kantar Public ‘It Starts With Me’ 2016 campaign evaluation [PDF]
Source: Kantar Public