Wintec students lend hand on Ending HIV campaign
Ant Donovan, Creative Director of the Frost*collective, challenged Wintec students to help on a campaign aimed at ending HIV in New South Wales.
How to get gay men to test more often for HIV? That was the challenge for a group of Wintec students at a Spark workshop this week.
Ant Donovan, the Group Creative Director of the Frost*collective based in Sydney, ran the workshop on day one of the festival at Wintec’s city campus.
Donovan shared a live brief from ACON, the Aids Council of New South Wales.
The challenge for the students was to create ideas around the “test often” promotion which is part of the Ending HIV awareness campaign.
Aimed at gay men under 30, the campaign promotes the fact that there are now more testing centres, it’s free and it’s confidential, and the test, including results, takes no more than 30 minutes.
The participating students worked together in groups on the brief. They were given 45 minutes for brainstorming possibilities how to change the behavior of young gay men not getting tested regularly, even when they should.
“We are creatures of habit. We just constantly need to be reminded. Testing is not something people enjoy or want to do. You need to remind people of that and find your ways of doing it.“
Donovan also presented previous campaigns around spreading the message of acting responsible personally, portraying sex as always positive and avoiding fear.
The students found it challenging to get their ideas down on paper and try to find a way to reach out to the young target group in a positive and funny way.
The ongoing campaign Ending HIV aims to reduce HIV transmissions in NSW by 80% by 2020. Donovan and his team are proud of the fact that since the campaign was ‘out on the streets’ back in 2013, the number of new HIV transmissions is constantly going down.
There is still always more to do.
“More need for awareness,” Donovan said. “Introducing the work to other global HIV organisations. Constant learning. Keep people reminded in wearing condoms and getting tested.”
Stopping new transmissions of the HIV-Virus in New South Wales in the next two years would be a great result of this successful cooperation between Frost*collective and ACON.
