The role of creative content in public health messaging 

When designing India’s Public Health Campaigns, one thought consistently comes to the forefront—how important is it to raise awareness, and how necessary is it to focus on creative content when developing public health messaging? Recent initiatives like the National STOP Diarrhoea Campaign 2024, JICA's ongoing Achhi Aadat campaign, and statements from Union Health Secretary Apurva Chandra underscore a common theme: the critical role of creative public health campaigns in achieving better health outcomes. Chandra had highlighted that India's success in advocating for digital health innovations is crucial to the transformative process needed to meet public health goals.

The National STOP Diarrhoea Campaign, for instance, aims to reduce child deaths from diarrhoea through a multi-sectoral approach, emphasising the need for awareness, cleanliness, and ORS. This campaign is not just about spreading information; it's about ensuring the message reaches every corner of the country, especially in regions where literacy levels are low.

In public health messaging, the role of creative content is not just to inform but to inspire real change. The challenge lies not only in spreading important information but ensuring it reaches the last mile. Having worked on many such projects, here are two public health campaigns that highlight how important creative content is for effective messaging.

One such campaign is Baal Vivah, Abhi Nahi Kabhi Nahi, executed as a part of an initiative taken under the CEFM (Child, Early and Forced Marriage) by Plan India to eradicate child marriage in India. The campaign was executed on ground and digitally, and it witnessed a huge traction and participation on both the levels. The challenge was to dismantle culturally rooted age-old customs and traditions, and prompt people to transform their mindset towards child marriages. It is easier said than done. It involved a lot of assessment towards the attitude of the people regarding such an issue and required the creation of something impactful and thought-provoking. 

The campaign was carried out in three states that covered 388 villages. 960 shows of nukkad natak or street plays were organised which reached over 1.1 lakh people. Awareness campaigns were conducted in various schools. Posters and leaflets were handed over to young girls and sessions were held with them. In addition to designing posters and social media posts with call to action messaging, what really worked for this campaign are the testimonial videos. Nirmala Devi, who was married at the age of 16 under her parents’ influence said that within six months of her marriage she got pregnant. 

This led her to face many health issues throughout her life. She said that her experience taught her the importance of education and freedom of choice. Through this campaign, she pledged not to repeat history when it comes to her own daughters. 

Another campaign which must be emphasised is a digital campaign done by Humsafar Trust to promote safe sexual behaviours and practices, which it successfully did among a large section of the youth. By embedding creative messages into platforms that the youth frequently use, it increased the likelihood of the message being seen and remembered. A simple copy like Fun Kar, Sambhal Kar drove home the message of safe sexual practices. The strategic media buying across dating apps, OTT platforms, and social media ensured that the campaign had a broad reach, making it a significant step towards normalising conversations about sexual health among the younger generation. 

In this case, the approach was a bit different than the previous example. Here the communication was happening with an entirely different audience. So, the messaging needed to be more open, direct and youthful. Usage of trending meme videos, illustrations, and animations for creative content creation worked here. For instance, what if someone finds out they are HIV positive? While conceptualising, the general attitude of the audience should be kept in mind. One cannot forget that there is still a taboo and stigma associated with such topics. 

So, showing a face or testimonial video may not be a good idea in this context, instead the video should encourage the viewers to go for testing and stress on the point that HIV testing can be confidential. Hence, the decision was made to opt for illustrations, and then animating the videos in a quirky fashion to attract attention, which eventually worked. From ideation to dissemination of the information, a fantastic campaign was executed that speaks the language of the target audience. 

In a country like India, where multiple languages are spoken, visuals play a crucial role in ensuring that the message is understood by all. That is why visual content, such as videos from UNFPA and UNICEF, works. The concepts have to be easily understandable and relatable that transcends language barriers, making the message accessible to a broad audience. Nirmala Devi’s visual communication worked because the content was relatable to a lot of women across the nation. 

Here is the thing, nobody wants to be handed a list of things to do or not to do. Chances are that many people will shove a text heavy leaflet in their bag to never come back to, or may not have the ability to read and understand complex messaging, particularly in public health. That is why, if our aim is to change their behaviour, we have to involve them. In addition to the content being interesting and catchy, they have to be creative enough for them to stop and read. 

This definitely involves a lot of parameters such as whether the content is visually appealing to their taste, or the communication resonates with them, and the angle of communication that we are using. All these creative factors, when combined with love, passion and determination to bring about long-lasting transformation, can actually make public health messaging a huge success.

(Our guest author is Deepmala, Founder and CEO at The Visual House)