FDOH: KNOW YOUR HIV STATUS

Ideas.

With HIV infection rates climbing in underserved and minority populations, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) turned to evok to support their outreach and prevention programs throughout the state. The population segments facing the biggest impact included Hispanic, African American and Creole residents primarily living in the six largest Florida DMAs: Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, West Palm, Broward and Miami-Dade. With this vital psychographic data at hand, our team came together and envisioned an empowering HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention campaign to educate these audiences about available healthcare and promote testing and treatment.

Work

The “Know Your HIV Status” campaign speaks to a very personal and often stigmatized subject—sexual health and HIV testing and prevention. Whether it was lack of education and awareness of testing, prevention and treatment options, or the feelings of embarrassment or shame, we understood the challenges our audiences faced in protecting their sexual wellbeing. To combat those challenges, we knew we had to approach our campaign from a place of empowerment, celebration and education, not fear.

Since 2017, our agency has been working on a behavior change model (also called social marketing) for the Minority HIV Prevention Campaign. We create change through a proven process of bringing awareness to the target audiences, educating the audiences, modeling the change we would like to see in the priority audience and resulting in change both in attitudes and in behavior. In year one, 2017, the prevention campaign began with an almost exclusive testing message: “Get tested. Know your HIV status. Learn what’s next.” This message was created in English, Spanish and Creole for six priority markets, among multiple ethnic and demographic populations. In 2018, we began adding PrEP messaging

In 2019, the campaign evolved to add treatment as prevention messaging and we personalized our efforts even further with the use of testimonial-style creative and first-person messaging. “I protect myself,” became an invitation for others to share their own reasons to get tested, stay in treatment or explore prevention options, whether it was to maintain an undetectable status, enjoy every moment or safeguard their loved ones.

In 2020, we expanded Continuum of Care messaging and in 2021, we added U=U Messaging. Core messaging now includes: Testing, PrEP, and Continuum of Care (u=u) all as methods of prevention. Maintaining each of these messages for each priority population is critical to effecting true behavioral change.

We showcased our messaging through media planning, placement and fulfillment; social media planning, content strategy and creation, and community management; website design, development, launch and maintenance; and experiential marketing, design and fulfillment. With transcultural messaging in English, Spanish and Creole, we reached at-risk populations with language that accurately represented their communities. Our media approach that blanketed the state in sex- positive, inspiring creative, ranging from bus shelters and digital billboards to broadcast and in-app advertising.