Syphilis was back from the dark ages. In fact, it was back at record levels, with gay men accounting for 70% of reported cases. Tasked with increasing testing, we had to make syphilis meaningful to an audience enjoying a greater sense of sexual freedom following the introduction of PrEP (HIV preventative drug).

Our innovative use of digital media allowed us to infiltrate 6 key moments pre, during and post sexual encounters, so we could “join in” on the action ourselves. From geo-fencing sex-on-site locations, to those searching PrEP and identifying and targeting late night partiers who were going for “sleepovers”.

Syphilis – perceived as an STI from yesteryear – had re-emerged at record levels. In the last few years, reported cases had increased 560%. And, of those affected, 70% were men having sex with men.

Syphilis is highly infectious and can be symptomless in its early stages. So, while condoms are the primary preventative method for avoiding transmission, testing and treatment are the only sure ways to stamp it out.

The New Zealand AIDS Foundation tasked us with increasing Syphilis testing by 15%. We would need to bring this threat to life in a meaningful way and given our modest budget of $20k, we would have to incredibly tight in our targeting, to make sure we were hitting just the right audience at the most relevant and crucial moments.

We would need to go further than only gay males, reaching the most DTF - ‘Down To Fornicate’ audience.

Why was this STI growing so rapidly? In 2018, HIV-preventative drug “PrEP’’ became free, thereby massively reducing the risk of HIV infection. Suddenly, sexually active men felt safeguarded against HIV and were therefore less likely to use a condom. Opening the door for other infections.

For decades, AIDS has been the worst thing to worry about. Now with PrEP alleviating fears, we have a community of sexual fearlessness.

Unlike HIV, Syphilis was hardly heard of. And those who had heard of it, disregarded it. They thought it was something that affected pirates and royals from hundreds of years ago. Our provocative campaign challenged this belief, blurring the lines between the past and the present – we reimagined club-goers as old-world characters in modern hook-up locations. They propositioned the viewer with provocative headlines, woven together from modern pick-up slang and Shakespearean language.

Creative idea: Syphilis was back from the dark ages.

We needed to hone in tightly on our target audience sexually active gay males.

Small issue: Google protects users’ privacy, for those already searching STI information and in terms of their sexual orientation, meaning we couldn’t use standard targeting.

So, instead of targeting individuals our approach was to target moments

To find our DTF’s, we conceived an innovative behavioual detection approach. We tapped into Google’s knowledge of home addresses, and used this data-point to build out and profile those who were out in the early hours of the morning and not returning to their homes, but someone else’s.

We called this moment:

1. The “sleepover”

We then identified 5 additional moments indicating greater likelihood of sexual activity:

2. Scrolling dating apps

3. Cruising sex on-site locations

4. Searching for PrEP online

5. Accessing gay porn

6. Frequenting gay clubs

We surrounded our target audience, making our message impossible to ignore.

With a limited budget to wrap around our DTF audience, we sacrificed broader reach to add frequency and target ALL moments

Digital was most effective, with highly targeted OOH complementing.

By matching home addresses with real-time mobile ID locations, we could identify an audience who weren’t returning to their own homes but that of someone they’d met at a club or a dating app hook-up.

Our “sleepover” data-set was activated via PMP digital the morning after. We ingested mobile ID’s latitude/longitudes and OOH locations to position 100 street posters on the “walk of shame”.

We targeted users on dating apps like Grindr and Squirt and created custom audiences of those searching for PrEP online, indicating sexually active behaviour.

We joined the pre-action excitement with posters at gay venues and created a list of porn sites

We geo-fenced cruising sex-on-site locations collecting Mobile ID data to hone in on participants.

With just $20K budget and a sensitive subject our approach exceeded objectives:

A 20% uplift in testing vs the 15% ambition.

Of those that were tested, we saw a 350% increase YOY of positive Syphilis cases, indicating our campaign was seen by the right audience – those sexually active and most at risk.

Our approach made it impossible for the sexually fearless to ignore us, wrapping around key moments for our DTF audience, a small budget stretched further with data targeting innovations, delivering a strong digital frequency of 14 against our bespoke DTF audience.

For the first time, NZ AIDS Foundation saw an uplift for online bookings for Syphilis tests. Up from just 23 requests in the previous 12 months, our campaign directly drove 257 ‘Book a Test’ requests in just four weeks.