Two years we highlighted the UK government’s decision to shun social media and opt for magazines and television in educating the young of Britain about the dangers of Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea and other sexual diseases. This decision flew in the face of research showing that most young people took advice about sexual matters from their peers (=social networks) rather than from information campaigns of any kind. The decision has had disastrous consequences for many young Britons. A report now highlights that sexually transmitted diseases are running at their highest rates since the 1970’s, particularly amongst the under-25s.

[Update] More on the woeful uptake of Chlamydia testing. “The shortfall has been blamed on … problems engaging young people,” writes the BBC’s Nick Triggle.

The government has rowed back from its commitment to spend £50m over three years educating the young people of Britain about sexual health. There is a quiet epidemic of chlamydia amongst the young people of Britain. The UK has one of the highest infection rates in the world, with over 1% of 16-19 year olds being infected. Untreated chlamydia can cause infertility in young women. This decision not to spend this arbitrary sum on advertising is to be applauded. It is very ill-advised for anyone - let alone a taxpayer-funded government department - to pledge to spend a certain amount on advertising over a certain period of time. Spending money on advertising does not magically equate to changing attitudes or raising awareness. The government should instead commit to a measurement such as raising the awareness of the issue, or the incidence of young people seeking advice and then the outcome can be measured. Announcing that you have a big budget for advertising simply advises the advertising professionals that you have more money than sense.

However the good news on the budget has not been followed by shrewd allocation of the budget for the campaign between the various media.

The word on the grapevine when this campaign was first mooted a year ago (we heard about it via a PR company who asked our advice about getting the message out online) was that this campaign was not planned to involve a significant online spend but was going to be dominated by a TV campaign.

One ad has been released to the press. It shows good-looking teenagers getting off at a club. Their designer clothes are branded “gonorrhoea” or “chlamydia”; the commentary talks about “sexually transmitted diseases” and invites the audience to wear a condom.

The concentration is on TV and the information available seems limited. Stories in the Guardian and the BBC which routinely list useful links can’t find a website to link to and instead link to the Department of Health website, which does not even list the campaign on its front page. The top link today is from social search site Connotea where it featured under the “UK” tag, largely thanks to the medically-minded Connotea user Ojcius.

The PR company we spoke to suggested that the public relations budget was likely to be small, around £50k at the most and mostly directed to advising the press about the TV campaign. They wanted to know what they could do online. We advised that the budget allocation to the internet should be far higher, since it offered an excellent opportunity to reach the target audience with high quality information. Why the internet, they asked? Well, even the government’s own watchdog Ofcom has noticed that young people are watching less TV.

This is what a recent Ofcom survey said:

Television is of declining interest to many 16-24 year olds; on average they watch television for one hour less per day than the average television viewer. … Instead, the internet plays a central role in daily life; more than 70% of 16-24 year old internet users use social networking websites (compared to 41% of all UK internet users) and 37% of 18-24 year olds have contributed to a blog or website message board (compared to 14% of all UK internet users).

The news that the campaign creative (above) was aimed at magazines is particularly contrary, given that recent research has shown Internet use gaining year on year at 17% across Europe and magazine readership falling 7%.

Finally: persuasive research has shown that young people take advice on sex not from the government or the media, but from their friends. They don’t stop having sex or wear condoms just because they are asked to. Surely this was an opportunity for a campaign exploiting the fact that many young adults spend their leisure time not watching TV but talking on Bebo, MySpace or LiveJournal?

We don’t expect government communications experts all to be using sophisticated word-of-mouth measurement tools such as our own, but we do expect them to be a little more clued up about their target demographic. This seems a tremendously old-fashioned campaign. BTW Please contact us if you can find the website for this campaign. Searches on “chlamydia campaign” and even the campaign’s tagline “I’ve got Chlamydia” come up blank.