To create forward momentum for Casey House, and drive perceptional and behavioural change around HIV, we needed to spark conversations about the disease and expose stigma. We knew from conducting over 30 interviews with patients, physicians and caregivers, that there would be certain hot-button issues for people who are ignorant about HIV transmission—first among them was food. In spite of the fact that it’s impossible to transmit HIV through food preparation, we believed that many people would be uncomfortable with the idea of an HIV-positive chef preparing their meal. After an extensive online search, we could not find a single HIV-positive chef who went public with their diagnosis—probably for fear of losing their job. What if we opened a restaurant where every chef was HIV positive? This would generate conversation and help us educate the masses.

We created June's Eatery for 3 days and the #SmashStigma campaign in honour of Casey House founder, June Callwood. Staffed by 14 HIV+ cooks, this would be the world's first HIV+ restaurant. We collaborated with Canadian celebrity chef Matt Basile to train our HIV+ cooks, which also allowed us to engage his 65,000 followers on social. June’s was located on Queen Street, one of Toronto’s highest traffic streets, for maximum visibility.

Since Casey House had a tiny media budget, this activation was primarily a PR and social media play. Every component was engineered to drive as many impressions as possible. Our media invite was designed to evoke an immediate and visceral response: a jar of soup prepared by HIV+ chefs adorned with provocative phrases like “Swallow your prejudice” and “Fight HIV stigma with every bite.” It proved effective: over 100 media RSVP’d for the first night of the activation alone. 

The campaign sparked a global conversation earning over 926 million media impressions with 515 stories, 150 from major news outlets around the world. We secured feature, in-depth coverage that included interviews with Casey House spokespeople, Chef Matt Basile, and our 14 HIV+ cooks in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NBC, BBC, Fox, CTV, Global, CBC, VICE, Huffington Post, Reuters, Canadian Press, NPR and People Magazine. All tickets for the pop-up restaurant sold out generating $20,000 in revenue for Casey House. Beyond the restaurant, the campaign and the attention it received around the world attracted an additional $100,000 in corporate donations.

This generated unprecedented social media activity about HIV stigma. The campaign quickly gained over a million impressions on Facebook and 900,000 on Twitter with 70,000 engagements. Casey House responded to ignorance online through a dedicated team of social listeners who directly educated over 730,000 Canadians.

Out of 12,000+ comments, we inspired 27% of the audience to become advocates for the cause by responding to negative comments. This means for every two negative comments, there was one advocate jumping in to defend and smash the stigma that continues to this day.

The media coverage also caught the attention of HBO who started airing a documentary that we created about June’s. This gave it a national audience and allowed us to continue the conversation around stigma for months after the pop-up restaurant.

The campaign to fight stigma on behalf of Casey House was designed to generate as much earned media as possible. Casey House is a worldwide leader in treatment and wanted to be a worldwide leader in fighting HIV/AIDS stigma. But Casey House is a publicly-funded hospital with a miniscule budget for marketing communications. To lead a global conversation and expose stigma, we had to focus on earned as a way to amplify their tiny budget. We also needed a two-way conversation, so we could expose stigma and educate at the same time. PR afforded us this exact opportunity.

The best insights are founded in research, so we conducted proprietary pro-bono research for Casey House to prove our insight with a Leger poll of 1,500 Canadians that showed: 

1. 50% of Canadians wouldn't knowingly accept food prepared by someone HIV+ 

2. 37% of Canadians wouldn't share food with an HIV+ person 

Canada is one of the most progressive countries in the world, yet 50% of our population would turn their backs on a meal served by someone they knew to be HIV positive. This solidified our strategy to use food as a powerful catalyst for exposing HIV stigma to the misinformed. It also provided the media with an explosive headline about tolerance and understanding in a country known for its progressive values. Target media included national broadcast outlets to generate the explosive headlines and food and lifestyle media who would have an inherent interest in the food angle.

As one of the largest purpose-built HIV/AIDS hospitals in the world, Casey House’s social mission is to fight HIV stigma. Today, there are more people in Ontario, Canada, living with HIV/AIDS than there were during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 80’s. HIV stigma persists despite 30 years of public awareness, and education campaigns by A-list celebrities, including Madonna and Bono. Back then it verged on hysteria; now it's simply gone underground. Why? The public have never accepted that this is a disease that requires compassion instead of blame.  Casey House wanted to create a campaign that would engage the Canadian pubic in a headline making conversation about HIV, so that they could step in and educate where they saw ignorance. Our biggest tool for achieving this was earned media since we had a tiny budget of 93 000 euros for the entire campaign.