Work/MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions
The current global pandemic confirms that viruses don’t discriminate. Sadly, it’s people who do. That’s why COVID-19 has and continues to disproportionately impact more marginalized and disadvantaged people. But any person living with HIV will have told you that the very same inequities have existed long before the current pandemic. And alarmingly, for the most part why HIV infections continue to rise in Canada.
With the shared empathy, humility and goal to trigger social change, we partnered with the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, the community-based research team inside St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto – the national group also implementing the global HIV Stigma Index and initiative across Canada.
Alongside our client, we conceived the purpose-driven brand, The Positive Effect, and then collaborated on strategically refining its mission: to shift mindsets and enrich lives, effectively ending the HIV epidemic in Canada within 5 years.
With the purpose, and vision nailed down, we strategized and imagined how to get there.
Brand purpose, positioning and proposition
Brand ideation and portfolio architecture
UX, innovation and audience experience
Visual and verbal identity, and messaging
UI, website and touch-points; graphics, motion effects and audio mix
Launch and activation; ongoing strategy, content, social and social learning
For Dr. Sean Rourke, a scientist with the MAP Centre and University of Toronto professor, and his team piloting the new program, the pathway to reaching the 5-year goal was clear: “… we need to break down barriers to testing and access to care, and erase stigma at every step of the way.”
Research shows that HIV stigma is rooted in a fear of HIV and misinformation, triggered early on during the terrifying AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s. Reluctance to speak openly and honestly about what was happening led to misunderstandings and myths about HIV.
Despite game-changing medical advances in effective treatment for people living with HIV, in this age of misinformation and disinformation, the fear and distorted facts about how HIV is transmitted, and what it means to live with HIV continue to grip us today.
Ultimately, stigma blocks access to HIV testing, treatment and support services making transmission of the virus more likely.
The core strategy: powerful stories of lived experience mesh with evidence-based action
Above all, we devised a strategy where the very people living and thriving with HIV are front and centre, from the very beginning and ongoing. But getting to the end goal would mean much more than vital and requisite creative communications, tactics and social. The ability and impetus to confront and openly talk about HIV-related stigma and discrimination on people’s own terms were fundamental.
Immersed with our client team, we imagined a strategically imaginative UX and audience experience, and then built out the creative visual and verbal identity. Next came a highly interactive website and innovative UI – at its heart, a living, breathing depository of stories, with the functionality to submit more than words, including video, audio, art and imagery.
It’s here, a safe place where people share their fears, struggles and triumphs. To share what excites them about their lives, their potential and their impact on others – whether to seek help, to know they’re not alone. Ultimately it encourages them to see and think about themselves, and how they can and deserve to lead healthy and happy lives.
At the same time, shared, powerful experiences serves to refocus the lens on how everyone sees and thinks about HIV. To shift mindsets.
Informing, challenging, delighting
The website is also home to a disparately subject-based #HIVEndGoal blog and the community’s pozcast, a dynamic bi-monthly podcast that gets upfront and personal on issues that matter to the HIV community through candid conversations about health, work, love and life. Both inform and challenge the status quo and celebrate people living and thriving with HIV – what it means to be poz, sharing stories of resilience, courage and resolve.
A continuing mission to be everywhere
As national, data-driven insight continues to emerge, along with game-changing developments including the introduction and distribution of HIV self-testing kits, our continuing mission is to be everywhere. In stories and art, on the street, in videos, news media and social space. This is where we'll debunk misinformation and myths about HIV. It's where we'll shift mindsets through dialogue, shared experience, insight and imagination.
We’re all the positive effect
More a movement than a branded program, The Positive Effect has quickly grown into a diverse alliance of passionate people living with HIV, and the people, communities and organizations who support them.
With 20k+ unique visitors and growing, the branded movement contributes to informative dialogue across 3 social channels, has produced multiple, stirring podcasts, published over 50 remarkable stories and 20 thought-provoking blog posts.
By normalizing HIV and shifting mindsets, and enriching lives, the priority is to reach the undiagnosed. Ultimately to link people living with HIV to the care they need to live long and healthy lives, and to truly thrive!
