Sex on Tap? Yes please!

Got your attention? I thought it might…

Perhaps a little much for a Monday morning, but Sex on Tap is what we’ve had on our minds for the past few months while we’ve been working with YouthNet, the UK’s leading online charity for providing advice, information and support to young people aged 16 to 25.

Back in March, YouthNet asked us to help them raise awareness amongst their key demographic (see above) around firstly, an issue that affects a lot of young people: the often volatile and potentially sticky (ahem) relationship between sex & alcohol, and secondly (and concurrently), the services that YouthNet’s ‘online guide to life’, TheSite.org, can provide.

So, sex & alcohol, surely everyone knows about the possible dangers and risks of combining these two pleasures (and who’s denying they’re pleasures?). The number of responsible drinking and/or safe sex campaigns out there must equal at least a year’s worth of drunken fumbles at (or after) a student night out!

But, irrespective of all the work that goes into this area, it still remains an issue. With statistics showing that after drinking, 11% of young people engaged in unprotected sex in 2007 and 11% again claimed to regret that sexual encounter. On top of that, Boyd et al. reports that heavy drinking amongst students (aged 18-24) is associated with high risk sexual behaviour and sexual aggression.

Not a good place to start.

It was clear that we needed to tell the story differently, in a way that would really capture young peoples’ attention and make them think. We know that being disruptive makes people talk and what better way to engage young people than to shake things up?

As I mentioned, YouthNet is a wholly online charity providing emotional support through services and sites such as TheSite.org. We wanted to drive awareness of the charity and its services amongst young people, but we wanted to do it in the place that they most need to listen, and that place (believe it or not) is not in front of a computer screen but in the ‘real world’ -  offline, where they make their decisions… in the bar.

Based upon this insight, the Sex on Tap campaign and the ‘Morning After Brewery’ was born…

Our Sex on Tap campaign for TheSite.org from 1000heads on Vimeo.

The results? 6,000+ students experienced the Morning After Brewery across multiple university bars and were exposed to TheSite.org for the first time, 17,000 fully branded assets were given away as well as the odd thing being ‘misplaced’ from the bars (well they are students after all!).

And outside of the uni bars? The activity was talked about online by students, university unions, university press and local press including the Manchester Evening News, The Coventry Telegraph and BBC Radio Manchester (who even interviewed some students from Manchester about the campaign).

In all Sex on Tap reached over three quarters of a million people with, in the words of one student from Warwick “…a good message, a good good message!” that they couldn’t help but listen to.

Brought into the world on Monday, July 25th, 2011 and filed under Case Studies.