We distributed our condoms in garden centres because we knew that’s where our target audience would be (when they aren’t in the bedroom that is). We also created bold out of home as well as making them available online.

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We gave an outdated generation an updated sex education by creating The Hornicultural Society, a tongue-in-cheek entity combining sex and gardening, featuring limited edition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.

The biggest rise in STIs is among the over 65s. But how do you convince this difficult-to-persuade group that condoms aren’t just for stopping unwanted pregnancies, like they’d been taught at school? Research showed that when they’re not in the bedroom, they’re in the garden. So, we borrowed cues from their second favourite pastime (gardening) to talk to them about their favourite one (sex) and targeted them where we knew they would be – garden centres.

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

Older people in the UK have an obsession with garden centres. They love picking plants for their borders and seeds for their vegetable patches. The seed packets are generally very tastefully designed, with classic botanical illustrations. Which lend themselves very well to some playfully disruptive reinterpretations, turning artichokes into clitoris and aubergines into penises, in the same tasteful style that borrows from the elegant Royal Horticultural Society gardening books they leaf through – a name straight out of British folklore. That, coupled with their other love (puns), meant these couldn’t have been better designed to reach a conservative audience with a sparkle in their eye and a spark between the sheets.