NHS
Catch Feelings, Not HPV
Public health that got invited to the party. We took HPV vaccination to Europe's largest LGBTQ+ music festival and turned a medical obligation into something people wanted to wear.
6.4%
Click-through rate on Grindr, against 0.85% on Snapchat
43,000
People passed campaign visuals across a single weekend
51 secs
Average attention time on site. Most OOH takes a month for that
The Challenge
The audience at highest risk of HPV-associated cancers is the audience least well served by the way healthcare talks.
The NHS has committed to eliminating cervical cancer by 2040, and that ambition runs through HPV vaccination. Vaccination runs into a wall with young LGBTQ+ Londoners, and with men who have sex with men in particular.
Three things had to happen. Young adults aged 16 to 30 needed to know what the vaccine does. MSM audiences needed to understand their elevated risk of HPV-associated cancers, which almost nothing in mainstream health communication had ever told them. And the whole thing needed emotional weight, because information alone has never moved a needle on vaccination.
All of it on a budget under £50,000.
Nobody at a festival wants a health ad.
So we didn't make one.
This audience is not disengaged from health. Quite the opposite: health-literate, informed and vocal. What they are unconvinced by is the messenger. So we did not have an awareness gap to fill, we had a trust and belonging gap, and the message had to arrive from inside the culture rather than be parachuted into it.
The line borrowed a piece of dating-culture language the audience already used, landing the joke before it landed the point. Paired with 60s and 70s inspired visuals, it looked like merchandise rather than a leaflet, and it repositioned the vaccine from a medical obligation into an act of empowerment worth celebrating.
What We Did
Mighty Hoopla was not a media placement. It was the only room where the message could arrive as a peer rather than a prescription.
We became part of the weekend, not an interruption to it. Campaign visuals sat across the spaces where the audience was already gathering and already looking, delivering the message in the flow of the day rather than against it.
Merchandise did the heavy lifting. Festivalgoers picked it up, wore it and photographed each other in it, which turned a public health campaign into part of the weekend's visual identity and generated organic reach nobody paid for.
Paid digital surrounded the physical activation. Grindr reached MSM audiences in the platform they use, where sexual health messaging is expected and welcome. Snapchat carried broader reach across 16 to 30 London. The gap between their click rates is the whole argument for contextual relevance.
QR codes closed the loop on site. Every physical touchpoint routed to a dedicated campaign site and through to the NHS vaccination page, so a moment of curiosity became a booking rather than an intention somebody lost by the end of the weekend.
The Results
Benchmarks cleared across physical, digital and cultural measures.
Digital. 166,217 impressions across Snapchat and Grindr generated 3,527 clicks. Grindr returned a 6.4% CTR, vindicating the decision to speak to MSM audiences where sexual health is already part of the conversation. Snapchat delivered 0.85%, healthy for broad-reach social.
Physical. More than 43,000 people passed campaign visuals across the weekend, with average attention time of 51 seconds among women and 49 among men. That is dwell most out-of-home campaigns would take a month to accumulate, delivered in two days.
Web. 2,392 unique users reached the campaign site across 3,001 sessions, with 307 QR scans driving direct on-site action.
Cultural. The measure the numbers do not capture is the one the client cared about most. The merchandise was adopted and worn throughout the festival, amplification came from attendees rather than media spend, and an NHS message became part of how people chose to present themselves for a weekend.
Sustainability. Total carbon footprint of 25.255 kgCO2e, classified as Low under the IPA Media Climate Charter.