Did you know, that 75% of young Australians aged 15 - 29 who had sex in the last year, did so without a condom at least once. That is approximately 3,492,010 people having unprotected sex in a modern world, where sex education has been taught more than any year proceeding it.
So why are young people still not using protection?
The answer is often related to the fact that young people find sexual health campaigns that are targeted at them to be irrelevant and are often disinterested.
So with diseases going viral, physically, from a marketing perspective, the solution may be to create an informative campaign to go viral, digitally, as a solution. However, as young people grow up in a world where advertising and digital media surround them every second of everyday, being able to control a campaign to the state of going viral is often difficult and hard to achieve.
Enter the weak tie.
Mark Granovetter describes ties in general as the connections between people and that the degree of overlap between two individuals friendship network varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. Therefore, an emphasis is often placed on weak ties to be able to cross information from one network to another, without weak ties information tends to get stuck in individual circles, individual networks, and dies.
So in order to overcome this physical epidemic, first messaging needs to alter in order to become more relatable to the targeted audience. Young people need to feel information being fed to them is relevant, targeted and can easily be shared.
The issue with this particular topic is that, even with weak ties, the information being spread and the awareness that needs to be increased, is a topic culturally surrounded by such shame that it takes both a weak tie that is also willing and confident enough to speak up in a society where people are riddled with anxiety and confidence is a rare trait.
So I put it to those reading this, what messaging do you think would surpass the current taboos and allow awareness to be spread to literally prevent disease?
There are a few paramaters:
1. A tag line for this potential campaign - short, to the point, but effective.
2. Why you think this tag line would work.
Get sharing - especially weak ties!
So why are young people still not using protection?
The answer is often related to the fact that young people find sexual health campaigns that are targeted at them to be irrelevant and are often disinterested.
So with diseases going viral, physically, from a marketing perspective, the solution may be to create an informative campaign to go viral, digitally, as a solution. However, as young people grow up in a world where advertising and digital media surround them every second of everyday, being able to control a campaign to the state of going viral is often difficult and hard to achieve.
Enter the weak tie.
Mark Granovetter describes ties in general as the connections between people and that the degree of overlap between two individuals friendship network varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. Therefore, an emphasis is often placed on weak ties to be able to cross information from one network to another, without weak ties information tends to get stuck in individual circles, individual networks, and dies.
So in order to overcome this physical epidemic, first messaging needs to alter in order to become more relatable to the targeted audience. Young people need to feel information being fed to them is relevant, targeted and can easily be shared.
The issue with this particular topic is that, even with weak ties, the information being spread and the awareness that needs to be increased, is a topic culturally surrounded by such shame that it takes both a weak tie that is also willing and confident enough to speak up in a society where people are riddled with anxiety and confidence is a rare trait.
So I put it to those reading this, what messaging do you think would surpass the current taboos and allow awareness to be spread to literally prevent disease?
There are a few paramaters:
1. A tag line for this potential campaign - short, to the point, but effective.
2. Why you think this tag line would work.
Get sharing - especially weak ties!
Hi, I found this article that you might find useful: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xdwvpn/social-media-alternatives-for-your-failed-sex-education
ReplyDeleteThere are few campaign launched to fill the gap in the current sex education system, my favorite would be the campaign by New York City Health and Hospitals as they speak most teens language: EMOJI
Basically, they planned to run a campaign in which eggplant and peach emojis would pop up on teens' Facebook and Instagram feeds, and by clicking on these ads would lead social media users to the Health and Hospitals website.
Personally, I think we can talk about everything if we can find the right platform.