EMMA and Big Cat launch sexual health campaign in Birmingham

In June and July 2019, Big Cat and EMMA launched their collaborative campaign for Umbrella Health, an NHS sexual health trust, across Birmingham and Solihull. EMMA tested the effectiveness of metaphor use in a sexual health campaign advertising an STI home-testing kit for Umbrella Health. Measures for effectiveness included consumer understanding, appeal, and reported engagement of the campaign when metaphor was used as an innuendo for places in Birmingham, United Kingdom (e.g. Popping in his Mailbox?, Exploring her Botanical Gardens?).

​With a regional Qualtrics survey, EMMA

The campaign featured across Birmingham and Solihull, including the Grand Central Station, near the Bullring.

examined whether participant responses varied according to: (a) participant age, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, and (b) the figurative nature of twelve campaign adverts, in order to establish which figurative factors shape the extent to which consumers report that they find the adverts funny, appealing, and say they would engage with the campaign’s call to action (i.e. to order an STI kit) or its presence on social media. The figurative nature of the adverts varied three-way: (1) the level of conceptual work required to decode the adverts’ meaning; (2) the progression of the sexual conquest narrative (i.e. where in the progression of the sexual act from dating to sexual intercourse was referred to via metaphor); (3) the level of creativity (conventional to novel) in the adverts.

To read the full article, click here.