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The YMCA Derbyshire Safer Choices campaign is a sexual health project funded by Public Health England around safer choices for young people with regards to sexual health and safe relationships. For young people led by young people, its purpose is to raise awareness and addresses inequality in sexual and reproductive health, whilst battling the stigma associated with HIV.
This campaign has been co-produced with young people, sexual health professionals and youth workers working across sectors made with funding from the Office of Health Improvement and Equalities.
In 2022 we were approached by YMCA Derbyshire to produce marketing communications assets for their Safer Choices campaign (logo design, social media content, copywriting, graphics, downloadable content for their website). More specifically, they needed us to develop and produce bespoke toolkits that would provide educational content for professionals to be able to deliver sessions with young people. It was important that these toolkits would be easily accessible and have their own landing page via their website which they wanted us to create.
A key requirement of the brief was to maintain a strong visual link with the YMCA brand identity. The brand codes used in the campaign logo, toolkits and other assets were informed directly from the YMCA brand guidelines.
Primarily, this was an important awareness campaign targeting young people. With this in mind, we had a duty to educate ourselves first and foremost in order to be the best ambassadors we could be — requiring us to learn from the team at YMCA, the issues that were facing their target audience and devise best ways to attract their attention and deliver these sensitive and perhaps what some would see as taboo messages.
It was crucial for us to visually communicate this topic effectively yet appropriately for the correct age range — the graphics were a key focal point for this as well as collaborating with AVIT media who helped develop content for the videos used.
Not only did we provide all visual communication assets to launch this campaign, we also designed and produced social media templates which provided YMCA Derbyshire with the tools they needed to roll out this campaign and market it effectively from a branding perspective.
This campaign, through the initial launch phase, has proven longevity – with the campaign still live, and toolkits being downloaded regularly, more than 9 months after initial launch. Our marketing toolkit has now been rolled out nationally amongst the YMCA movement (116 YMCAs across England and Wales) and Foyer Federation.
Our bespoke toolkits and a user-friendly website meant that we had achieved our objectives of tailoring this project to suit our younger audience, whilst meeting the YMCA and their funders needs. We provided a service to the YMCA which enabled us to be flexible around changes as the project evolved.
“MacMartin quickly understood the brief of the project, our brand guidelines and worked with us to meet ours and our funders needs. Being a young person led project meant that at times information was delayed or sent in different formats, they had patience and understanding.
We’ve now gone on to work with MacMartin to re-design elements of our whole website as we know they completely understand and support our charity. They are quick to respond, professional and produce great pieces of work, I would recommend them.”
Winner of Best Small Business in the Rural Business Awards 2021
Finalist of Best Digital/Creative Upscaler in the Mainframe Awards 2021
Esme Wade Finalist of Apprentice of the Year in the Enterprising Women Awards 2022
Finalist of Small Business of the Year in the Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2022
