Summer campaign - evaluation

Evaluation from the second burst of the Time to Change campaign, which ran from 13 July – end of August, has shown some very encouraging results. An incredible 34 million people saw the campaign 4 times. We are really excited that the campaign is continuing to build on the success of the January launch.

Some highlights

Advertising

The campaign is well recognised with 49% of people saying they were aware of the campaign. All our media contributed well to the recognition – with 26% of our audience recalling the TV advert, 24% recalling the press ads, 8% recalling the beermats, 7% recalling our online films and 16% recalling our PR coverage.

The advertising is effectively communicating our key campaign messages, this has strengthened since the launch campaign. When we tested attitudes of our target audience to our advertising messages by asking about the appeal, engagement and credibility, overall, all three areas have also improved since January.

Online films

The two new online films have had a massive impact with over 446,000 people seeing the ‘Schizo the movie’ trailer and just under 65,000 viewings of ‘Kids Party’.  The films also received excellent PR coverage. They have certainly delivered something extra through their more hard hitting style and our tracking shows that compared to other media channels, they are stronger at communicating to people that they should change their attitudes and also how they could help a friend. 

Improving knowledge, attitudes and behaviour

The summer campaign has built considerably on our January launch results. Evaluation carried out by the Institute of Psychiatry, has shown that people who had seen the campaign were likely to have better scores relating to their knowledge of stigma and discrimination and, crucially, improved behaviours than those who had not seen the campaign.

This is especially encouraging as our ultimate outcome is changing behaviour.

Media coverage

We had 212 pieces of national and regional media coverage including notable success for our ‘Schizo – the movie’ story which generated 85 separate mentions – with almost blanket coverage across national BBC broadcast channels (including the influential Radio 4 Today programme, Radio 2 and BBC Breakfast). The story was also covered in four national press titles, including the Sun.  Another successful hook was our work-related stigma in a recession story which led Sky news reporting throughout the day it launched and had mentions again on Today, BBC Radio 5 Live and Banking Times.  

Online activity

Our website performed really well with just under 60,000 visitors during the summer campaign period. We also had a great success with our presence on Facebook, gaining an additional 9,405 Facebook fans, taking us to a total of just over 24,200 fans who all want to show their support and share their experiences.   

Plus, we now have over 2,400 people who have joined our visual pledge to show their support for ending the discrimination and stigma faced by those with mental health problems. If you haven’t already joined, why not sign up now! (You will need to have a Facebook account to join the visual pledge).

Local support

There has been lots of enthusiasm from individuals and organisations who are getting involved locally. At least 117 organisations that we know of ran their own form of local campaign activity over the summer campaign period, including NHS organisations, mental health charities/groups, colleges/universities, the police and councils. This amazing support from organisations is helping the campaign to reach local communities around the country.

What’s next?

These are very exciting and encouraging results, but we are only at the start of our journey towards ending mental health discrimination. We now need to carry on harnessing all the support and enthusiasm there is out there for the campaign.

We will be using this evaluation to plan for the next burst of activity to take place in Spring 2010 and with everyone’s help we hope to build on the success of the campaign so far. We’ll keep you updated with these plans! 

Thank you to everyone who has helped to make the campaign such a success so far. 

We hope you will continue to support Time to Change and join us in taking action to challenge stigma and discrimination.