In the spirit of openness I must declare a massive personal interest in the project discussed in this post, having being the client who originally commissioned it, before then moving across to work for the agency who delivered it. Despite this, my actual involvement was limited, but it is a great behaviour change project that colleagues on both sides of my CV have taken great pride in – and rightly so!
The challenge for NHS Coventry was to turn the curve in declining young people, I think aged around 16-24, attending local dental provision. The PCT had seen a marked drop and as ever wanted to try some innovative approaches to tackling this growing problem. From this the Social Change team at ICE Creates developed the enigma that is Lady Go’Diva, a post-modern pop starlet to challenge Lady GaGa’s crown (well in the West Mids anyway!)
In the first month the video has seen more than 3,000 hits on You Tube, with a massive viral push planned around the university freshers season later this year. It was a brave move for the PCT dental team to embrace this approach, but one that could prove to be clearly in line with future thinking, as this piece from Cisco suggests, that by 2013 video content will represent 90% of all internet traffic, and 64% of all traffic will be on smart phones.
The portability of video content is also a great benefit for deployment in appropriate behaviour change programmes, as the ability for people to share and embed in blogs or via social media sites has massive potential for reach into networks and groups that traditionally have been inaccessible. I hope to be able to share some great results from this campaign over the coming months, and if the buzz generated so far is anything to go by, I expect to see Lady Go’Diva recording that difficult second single some time soon – I dread to think what treatment Chlamydia Screening could get!
To find out more about this campaign, check out Osocio’s recent post here. And not wanting to just focus on the great work by my current and former employers, I thought best to also share this great video casestudy (another great example of how to use the medium) on a different dental social marketing approach by NHS Kensington and Chelsea/Lamerton Swales.
behaviourchangereview 