UK
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is one of the oldest and most reputable research
institutions in the world.
The School received a grant to conduct research and development into the cause and prevention of diarrhoeal disease in the provinces of Ouanaminthe and Port-au-Prince in Haiti. The aim being to create a campaign of marketing and behavioural change communications/materials to combat this.
Globally, diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death of children under the age of five. It can be prevented through improved water quality, sanitation and hygiene practices. In Ouanaminthe, handwashing with soap is not considered part of a daily routine.
As part of this project Evolve Creative (London) was tasked specifically with focusing on handwashing with soap.
Our challenge was to create a communication campaign - using human-centric design - to create and establish a behavioural change in mothers and female caregivers of young children; motivating them to wash their hands more regularly.
We established a series of workshops and research focus groups that took place in Ouanaminthe. These were specifically designed to provide an understanding of the attitudes and lifestyle habits of the target audience, which were critical to establishing and forming the creative direction.
We used the information and insights gained from this research to identify the emotive factors necessary to drive this campaign and to formulate our creative thinking. This translated into stimulus material and a choice of text and imagery-based campaigns - conveying the key messages – which were to be tested on the focus groups on our return to Ouanaminthe.The focus groups responded very positively to our concept of ‘attention to time’.
The winning theme of ‘STOP! Take time to wash your hands with Soap’ (‘POZE. Fe tan lave men’w’ in Haitian), was created using powerful imagery (photographical) of the outstretched hand supported by the palm symbol graphic. We constructed a campaign to be delivered across a range of media including above- and below-the-line activities featuring an implementation usage manual to be used by local agencies in Haiti.
We successfully partnered with Evolve Creative for the design of behaviour change communication to promote handwashing with soap in Haiti. The resulting materials were innovative and high quality and were appreciated by ourselves and our clients. Working with Evolve was an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Dr. Adam Biran (lecturer) London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
