Good Life Campaign wins AfriComNet Award!

I love my job.

I love my job even more when we win awards.

Last night, the Good Life Campaign, an initiative which a countless number of individuals in almost as many organizations have poured their hearts and souls into over the better part of the last year and a half, was awarded the African Communication Network (AfriComNet) Annual Award of Excellence in HIV/AIDS Strategic Communication in Africa for the social marketing category.

Our nomination, which pretty much "sums" it up:

The AFFORD Health Marketing Initiative is a 5-year, USAID-funded health marketing initiative aimed at improving accessibility, affordability and availability of basic health products and services, while simultaneously enhancing knowledge of, self-efficacy towards, and correct use of these products and services among Ugandans. AFFORD focuses on core health segments of public health concern: HIV/AIDS prevention and palliative care, malaria prevention and treatment, family planning and child survival. AFFORD’s unique approach to integrated marketing communication provides a strong and continual link between products, practices and services, and creates and sustains mutually beneficial public-private partnerships.

Formative research revealed that Ugandans equate “wellness” primarily with material wealth, rather than physical health. This led to the conceptualization of The Good Life Campaign, an overarching marketing communication platform designed to promote the simple things Ugandans can do everyday to keep healthy and save some money, thereby improving overall quality of life and stimulating demand for AFFORD products and services. The campaign targets the entire family, including young couples, care takers of children under 5, pregnant women, and people living with HIV or AIDS.

The campaign launched with The Good Life Show, an innovative and interactive multi-channeled game show that aired weekly on television and radio and rolled out in community road shows throughout the country. Its entertainment-education format broke through message fatigue; couples competed in “Think,” “Talk,” and “Act” rounds, where they were challenged to answer short answer questions, to see how much they knew about their partners, and to act out health behaviors for their partners to guess.

Through these games, each episode aimed to increase knowledge, facilitate couple communication, and promote steps toward positive health behaviors, including the correct and consistent use of AFFORD products and services, such as Protector® condoms, Pilplan® oral contraceptives, Injectaplan® injectable contraceptives, MoonBeads® natural method of family planning, Aquasafe® water treatment, and Restors® + Zinkid® new low Osmolarity ORS formula with Zinc to fight childhood diarrhea. The Good Life Show featured AFFORD products in the show’s questions and challenges, as prizes, and as sponsors. Field staff together with distributors carried out direct sales of a wide range of products to crowds, and links to services were included in each episode.

The Good Life Show encouraged wider participation of the target audience through a Question of the Week. Listeners and viewers called the toll free Good Life hotline to submit their answers to an automated voicemail system. Weekly prizes for randomly selected callers with correct answers included mosquito nets, mobile phones, radios, bicycles, and other practical, yet highly valued family-oriented rewards. The individuals with the highest number of correct answers over the span of the game show were entered into a drawing for the grand prize, a Toyota pick up truck, donated by Toyota Uganda and IAA Health Care, and valued at USD $33,000. Audience members further submitted frequently asked questions through the hotline, which was used to generate content for later episodes and parallel, reinforcing campaign activities. The hotline received an average weekly volume of 3,700 calls.

The Good Life’s unrelenting commitment to language translation and hard to reach populations ensured high and effective reach. From April to October, 2007, The Good Life Show aired 24 episodes on two national television stations, 24 radio episodes in 5 languages on 12 local stations, and conducted 120 road shows, reaching an estimated 8,997,694 Ugandans through the three communication channels. Support materials included 22 press columns, 22 radio spots, 2 brochures, and billboards in 5 languages. Good Life product ads, mentions and logos were included on all mass media and print materials. PR events, press ads, banners, t-shirts, wheel covers and other give-aways served to increase the campaign’s visibility. Additionally, the Everyday Health Matters newsletter, Under the Mango Tree community outreach and radio program, experiential marketing activations, and Popular Opinion Leaders network served as communication vehicles to reinforce the messages of the campaign.

AFFORD developed new partnerships with the private sector through a sponsorship drive that successfully enlisted 13 private sector sponsors and leveraged over $135,000 in cash and in-kind donations. In addition to Toyota Uganda and IAA Health Care, sponsors included pharmaceutical companies, malaria net distributors, household product producers, and radio and television production houses and stations.

While formal evaluation data is pending the completion of AFFORD mid-term household survey, Steadman exposure data, hotline feedback, pre and post intercept interviews at road shows, television and radio station feedback, and anecdotal evidence show that the entertaining, multi-channeled approach has broken through health message fatigue. The television episodes have been wildly popular in urban and semi-urban areas with tv access; spontaneous watching groups were formed in some areas. The radio episodes generated double the amount of exposure as television episodes. There seems to be a strong willingness to embrace messages in couple communication among a variety of age groups.

AFFORD’s experience with The Good Life! Campaign and Show has the potential to help other social marketing programs address the challenge of integrating broad behavior change messages with the use of specific products and services. The campaign also offers valuable lessons concerning ways to motivate public-private partnerships and support for multi-channeled campaigns.

I wasn’t fast enough on my feet to get a picture of the whole team (it’d be a picture of 40 some-odd individuals), but here are the wide smiles of the AFFORD/UHMG communication team: Antje Becker-Benton, Efua Namyalo, Jen Orkis, Daudi Ochieng, and Duncan Musumba. Special credit also goes to the other members of the creative team: Frederick Rariewa (Pulse Uganda, Ltd.), Carol Kamya (IVAD Productions), Steve Jean (Fenon Entertainment), James Black (Lowe Scanad) and our host and hostess, Abbey Mukiibi and Irene Kulabako. Congs to all!