Image Credit : Tiny Hunter & Play Safe
Project Overview
Tiny Hunter worked with NSW Health to rebrand Play Safe – NSW’s online safe sex resource for people aged 15-29. The site is part of an ongoing digital program that includes campaigns, social media, and content.
Aimed at increasing condom usage and regular STI testing, in nine months the website saw an increase in NSW visitors of 20% and over 14,000 goal completions on site.
These goals include functions designed specifically to suggest behavioral change, including a ‘Could I have an STI?’ quiz , a clinic locator, and anonymous email function (Nurse Nettie) for sexual health advice.
Play Safe talks to young people frankly, honestly, and no-holds-barred about subjects that the government wouldn't normally be known for tackling.
The program has received widespread support in the industry and is now being used to showcase best practice in the sector. The Play Safe community discussion forum - which uses a team of volunteer peer moderators - is also a first for a sexual health website in Australia.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Design director: Ben Barkwith
Designer: Ara Isidiro
Copywriter and Content Strategist: Brooke Nolan
Project Brief
Launched in 2014, digital safe sex resource Play Safe was originally aimed at 15-19-year-olds who were just becoming interested in sex. But – with Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) on the rise amongst young adults across the state – NSW Health wanted to reposition it to appeal to sexually-active 16-29 year-olds.
The website and associated digital channels needed to be repositioned to meet the overall program objective of creating behavioural change and increasing condom usage and STI testing.
The question was… how could we make Play Safe connect with the audience? After all, who wants sex advice from the government?
Tiny Hunter was chosen as the project partner to deliver research, branding and positioning, website, content strategy and creation, and social media management across a three-year period.
Project Need
Play Safe needed to look/feel like somewhere that 15-29-year-olds would want to visit for sexual health advice. The new website is much edgier; with inclusive, welcoming language, that takes a ‘peer to peer’ rather than ‘government’ approach. The final design is very ‘magazine’, with bold, bright colours.
This design carries through social media such as Facebook and Instagram - giving a consistent look and feel across all assets.
The project also needed to show behavioural change, and multiple functions were added to the site to demonstrate this:
1). ‘Could I have an STI?’ quiz. Although the previous website included a quiz, it was laborious (over 20 questions) and the drop off rate was high. We simplified this dramatically and changed the language/tone. It is now the most used feature
2). Nurse Nettie. This anonymous email function allows people to ask questions directly to a real sexual health nurse in Sydney
3). The Play Safe Forum is a place for young people to hang out and discuss sex, sexual health, relationships. A group of volunteer moderators aged 18-29 (many are studying healthcare at university) create discussions, reply to posts and offer peer-to-peer support to people who need it. Since launch, we’ve seen a rise in posts from new members asking for advice on everything from herpes to lube - with Play Safe’s Mod Squad providing the answers and support they need. Nurse Nettie is also on the forum to handle any health-related questions.
User Experience
As a sensitive subject – and one that people do not actively look to engage with – it was important that the new brand connected authentically with the audience. But in a way that is appropriate as a Government initiative.
Therefore, the new brand, tone of voice, messaging, content and website is based on various stages of audience research including one-to-one interviews.
The project started with a large body of youth sexual health segmentation research, which identified higher risk young people.
The next stages included;
1). A survey with young people to discover what they wanted from a sexual health resource
2). One-to-one user testing during concept stage to decide between two creative directions and inform the design, content and language
3). One-on-one user testing during development to ensure all key functions of the website had maximum visibility and usability
For this research, we recruited young people from the higher risk groups to ensure the website’s messaging, design, and functionality truly resonated.
The result is an easy-to-use website which clearly showcases the most important functions related to KPIs - Nurse Nettie, the STI quiz, STI clinic locator, and STIs info page. The placement of these call to actions has been paramount to the successful results so far.
Project Marketing
The website is supported by various marketing activities, including blogs and articles on the website, an active forum with input from volunteer moderators, ongoing social media content on Facebook and Instagram (created using a content strategy developed from the research stage), and digital campaigns focussed at behavioural change.
This approach has proven extremely successful, as shown from the results during a recent advertising campaign (November - December 2018):
1). New visitors grew by 400% (30,144 during the campaign period versus 6,032)
2). Goal completions (such as the STI test quiz, service locator, Nurse Nettie questions) rose by 550% (6,953 versus 1,069)
Play Safe is also supported by various offline marketing activities including events, partnerships, and a festival activation project called Down to Test where festival-goers can get free STI tests.
Project Privacy
This website follows all online privacy and security standards, including clear and terms and conditions/privacy information etc available on the site.
Given the sensitive nature of the subject, security is absolutely paramount and as well as the expected security standards additional steps have also been taken to protect the personal information and data of users.
Digital - Government Services
The provision of timely government services has been transformed as applications and sites are developed and implemented to either replace or complement previous methods. Be it the delivery of current and up to date critical information, compliance, community support and engagement, notification and registration or providing greater accessibility to government resources.
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