Preston based creative agency The Hub aren’t the type to opt for an easy life. Over the past 18 months they’ve carved a niche for themselves developing creative design and marketing approaches to communicating with hard to reach audiences, including teenage drinkers, immigrant populations and drug users.

Commissioned by the Lancashire Drug and Alcohol Team, The Hub recently devised a campaign to reduce overdose deaths in the county. “This was fascinating to work on”, said Steven Johnson, Creative Director. “Research revealed a very unresponsive audience with a complete mistrust of authority. The tactics we recommended were designed to get as close as possible to user-to-user communication – the only place where trust can be gained. We recommended a guerrilla approach, graffiting needle hotspots and a blanket low-tac sticker campaign to create the impression that the message was rising up from the street.”

Given the client’s wider remit to reduce crime and disorder, some of the more controversial elements put forward by The Hub had to be pulled back, but one that did get through was the ‘roach card’. Steven explains, “We produced thousands of business card-sized giveaways, ready perforated to allow easy tear-off of nine perfect roaches, each of which had the message and URL printed on. The client has since received anecdotal evidence of a situation in which a user’s roach card spurred his companions into calling emergency services following his overdose.” In these days of Google ad words, html mailouts and SMS marketing, it’s interesting to note that there are still audiences who just don’t get messages delivered via those channels.

The agency’s ‘Get It On’ campaign targeted young drinkers and worked to encourage safe sex within that audience. The campaign centred on a condom packet emblazoned with a call to ‘Get it on’ and was rolled out on bus sides and adshels, on radio, and in pubs and clubs across Preston, Cumbria and South Ribble. Ten thousand printed condom packets were produced and distributed in person by Rock FM staff in a range of popular night spots and town centre areas. “Given the subject matter and the target audience, we could afford to get a little cheeky with the execution,” said Steven.

The campaign generated 180,000 web hits – an unprecedented response from the target audience – and won The Hub both the National Association of Healthcare Communicators ‘Hard To Reach’ Award and the Cumbria and Lancashire SHA Communications Excellence Award. All in all, that’s great result for the target audience, for the client and for the agency.

T: 01772 252 377
E: steven@hub-marketing.co.uk;
W: www.hub-marketing.co.uk