ACON Health gets up close and personal in its latest Ending HIV campaign via Frost*collective

ACON Health has launched its fifth installment of the award winning Ending HIV campaign by Frost*collective this week. Called Ending HIV 2.0 this integrated campaign across outdoor, print and social media continues to drive the overarching campaign objective of ending HIV transmission in NSW by 2020.

Ending HIV 2.0 has been designed to roll out across three stages with the first addressing the personal barriers and benefits associated with testing.

The four-month outdoor campaign starts with billboards in train stations, digital billboards and street posters in Sydney metropolitan locations, with regional centres Wollongong and Newcastle also getting a run. This will be followed by a second burst during the 2016 Sydney Mardi Gras Festival.

Along with outdoor, the campaign has a strong digital and social media focus to drive far-reaching community engagement encouraging gay men to act on the opportunity to undergo testing more frequently.

Frost*collective’s digital business, The Nest has created a series of short form videos that will be published on Instagram on launch. The Nest has also devised a content strategy for Facebook that is consistent with the campaign’s core idea of framing individual ownership and features community members talking about their personal testing experiences.

Says Anthony Donovan, group creative director, Frost*collective: “Ending HIV is something that 20 years ago would have been hard to imagine. However, the idea that there will be no new transmissions by 2020 is now a real possibility.

“In this execution, we’re trying to affect behavioural change through personal experiences. We put 12 gay men, all volunteers from different ages, culturally linguistically diverse backgrounds, sexual practices – including an Aboriginal man, a transgender young man, a couple from the NSW community – in the frame to strategically evoke emotional connections. Hearing people tell their stories is always extremely powerful.

“The impact of this campaign’s creative is its personalization. Over the course of the campaigning since 2013 we’ve built a high level of awareness around the new landscape of HIV while strategically highlighting the long term objective to end HIV transmission in NSW by 2020.”

With the campaign strategy focusing on engagement and active involvement, portraits of male gay representatives in the community are used in the outdoor and print communications.

High recall of the creative elements of prior campaigns including the brackets and equations are used with the portrait imagery to evolve the messaging. The same community representatives are featured in the short form videos for Instagram and Facebook.

Says Yves Calmette, principal planner, ACON Health: “Each Frost*collective campaign brings us closer to winning our fight to end HIV transmission. This is an exciting installment for the cause because of the personal stories it shares.

“The whole new concept is embodied by the change in the main tagline. The word ‘I’M’ added to ‘ENDING HIV’ becomes ‘I’M ENDING HIV’. This small change automatically takes the Ending HIV narrative to a very personal level, allowing each individual to own this cause and encourage them to act on it.

“We have no doubts that this campaign will be one of the strongest rally-cries to effectively and successfully change behavior and mindsets around regular testing to ultimately stamp HIV out by 2020.”

Anthony Donovan-Group Creative DirectorWing Lau-Designer; Chris Griffiths-Designer; Charlotte Bruton-Executive Producer; Nathalie Cano-Digital Producer; Daniel Mulligan-Senior Producer; Terence Chin-photography; Joshua Heath/Anthony McFarlane-videography & editing; Sarah Clark-copywriting.

Beverley Hall-Senior Account Director