Relate is the UK’s largest provider of relationship support. One of their key aims is to help their 65+ market have healthier relationships, but with the biggest rise in STI’s among the over 65s, clearly this isn’t healthy. So, how do you make this hard to convince age group think about safe sex?

Especially when they were taught that condoms were for stopping pregnancies, not diseases.

Research showed that when they’re not in the bedroom, they’re in the garden.

So we educated them on their No1 past time (sex) with cues from their No2 pastime (gardening).

We gave an outdated generation an updated sex education by creating The Hornicultural Society, a tongue-in-cheek entity combining sex and gardening, featuring limited edition condoms for the over 65’s in the guise of seed packets. Launching during National Gardening week, we distributed our seed packets in garden centres and online. Our seed packets looked innocuous at first glance, but on closer inspection, they were full of naughty details, with advice on how to keep your other bushes and hardy veg free from disease.

To make this hard-to-convince age group think about safe sex, we borrowed cues, insight and language from second most loved pastime - gardening.

Over 65s invest the most time and money in their sheds, gardens and allotments - spending five pounds a week on their garden.

Inspired by the oldest and most respected British gardening charity - The Royal Horticultural Society – we created a new organisation to appeal to (and entertain) the more conservative British broadsheet media titles that our audience read.

We needed compelling statistics, a great spokesperson and very visual products to send to media, presenters and newsrooms - something they’d want to show to the camera, read out and laugh about.

That led to creating limited edition, illustrated condoms aimed at the older generation. Not your everyday packs of condoms, but beautifully designed, humorously written and packaged like the seeds you’d find in the garden centre.

Under the banner of The Hornicultural Society, we briefed a world class horticulture illustrator to help develop classic and elegant botanical drawings which, on closer inspection, are suggestive of sexual organs. Tasteful rather than puerile nods to a clitoris, penis, breasts or testis. This subtle visual wit fit with the tone of voice of the campaign, further enhanced by the humour in the writing, which we needed to feel like was coming from common garden vernacular, but we gave phrases like ‘hardening off’ a completely new meaning. We also created bespoke typography to give each seed packet its own personality with cheeky characteristics built into the letters. Our copy and illustrations were then applied to our seed packets, to make them look as authentic as possible, with painstaking attention given to every tiny detail.

You won’t look at an onion or aubergine in the same way again.

1.6 billion impressions

95% of single pensioners would now use a condom (source: relate.org.uk)

200+ media outlets worldwide in first 5 days

5 billion earned media