On the face of it, a government agency is an unlikely candidate to get involved in people’s personal relationships. But New Zealand has shameful statistics of family and sexual violence, particularly amongst its young people.
To this end, the ‘Love Better’ initiative was set up by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) with the purpose of equipping youth with the knowledge, tools and capability to navigate and stop harm in relationships.
But being worthy of the attention of young people is easier said than done. The arena of youth relationships is vast, messy and very, very nuanced. To help pick a way through this reputation minefield and give stakeholders confidence in the project, Verian was called in to help plot the pathway from campaign start point to ongoing evidence of success.
Approach
The campaign audience of young people (aged 16-24) are notoriously difficult to engage so we designed for diversity and robust participation across a two-year research plan. Recognising that we needed young people as our guides, we set up a “Youth Forum” as a large ongoing advisory group. This comprised a rolling roster of 60 young people, drawn from diverse communities and backgrounds. Their inputs uncovered a whole raft of relationship struggles for young people, with one particular area that stood out - break ups. This became the start point for the campaign.
We invested in developing a robust theory of change which connected short term campaign measures with longer term outcomes. This was supplemented by an evaluation framework which defined key indicators, their associated sources and time horizons. We set up the “Youth Pulse”, a continuous quantitative monitor to track sentiments, behaviours, and engagement with the campaign. These results allowed the Theory of Change to be quantified and validated, and provided ongoing evidence of campaign impact.
Solution
The campaign took the guidance that our young people said they needed and translated it into their world - stretching into whatever shape it needed to work for audiences – in all, over 700 pieces of content, across 44 content creators and five media partnerships.
Impact
The campaign smashed every benchmark for both social media and editorial. Media stats totaled over 26 million engagements and 2.3 million completed views.
Our measurement framework tracked this hugely positive response, which included significant changes to how young people cope with, think about and seek support for breakups. The data shows that young people seem now more able to handle the challenges of break ups, with a 19 point drop in the number reporting break ups ‘blowing up’ - that’s 110,000 better breakups since campaign began. We’re proud to be part of creating hope that our next generation will be the one to love better.
Judges’ citation:
“The scale and difficulty of the challenge of equipping youth with the knowledge, tools and capability to navigate and stop harm in relationships, the comprehensive and collaborative approach to the research and campaign development, the audaciousness of the campaign itself and the results all make Verian and MSD worthy winners of the Supreme Research Effectiveness Award. This campaign and its research foundations are getting noticed worldwide because they positively impact society."
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