Burnett Foundation Aotearoa exists to prevent HIV transmission and combat stigma. Treatment has come a long way, but NZ still suffers from the hangover of ignorance and old-fashioned attitudes. In particular, Burnett had identified a harmful term being used by men-seeking-men to determine someone’s HIV status - ‘are you clean?’ - implying that someone with HIV is “dirty”.
To combat this, we needed something provocative, non-shaming, fun and, well, ballsy. Naturally, that meant one thing: dancing dicks. A lot of them, to the tune of a catchy song that explains why “asking are you clean can be pretty mean”. And with that “Don’t be a dick getting dick” was born.
Clearly, ASA restrictions and platform guidelines were going to make it tricky to navigate in traditional channels. We had to reach the right people, at the right time, in just the right way, whilst also reducing exposure with people who didn’t need to see the message. It was almost an exercise in negative targeting, so our media strategy broke almost every convention.
HYPER-TARGETING HOOK-UPS:
- Digital ads across Grindr and other relevant display channels used smart data to proximity target people in known hookup locations.
- Posters and condom wallets were also sent to sexual health clinics, sex on site venues and gay bars across the country.
LATERAL THINKING, BROADER REACH:
- We ran radio ad libs with ZM and BFM to start the dialogue, then leveraged push notifications and eDM’s from iHeartRadio to drive audiences to our video.
- We partnered with comedian Tom Sainsbury who created “don’t be a dick” content for his combined 282,000 followers.
- We commissioned a special “don’t be a dick” podcast episode with MSM community figure heads Kita Mean and Anita Wiglit, drawing some of their biggest audiences to date, achieving almost 3 times the engagement of past episodes in their Happy Hour series.
Kita and Anita shared content to their combined 213,000 Instagram followers and our influencer partnership with Tom Sainsbury earned 59k+ views.
