Agency’s powerful campaign tackles anti-social behaviour

Marketing and design agency MacMartin has delivered a hard-hitting campaign which aims to tackle anti-social behaviour.

Working with Staffordshire Police, a range of Staffordshire based council bodies and local businesses, MacMartin used its behaviour change expertise to create the ‘Every Action Counts’ campaign.

Featuring posters, social media posts, online advertising and video, the wide-ranging campaign aims to discourage anti-social behaviour and educate people on its consequences, while also encouraging residents to report anti-social behaviour and provide support to businesses.

It challenges people to consider whether their actions may disappoint loved ones.

And it features videos telling the stories of people who have turned their lives around, having been involved with poor decision-making in their youth.

Sian Twigg, project and campaign manager at MacMartin, said that sound behavioural science was behind the campaign, whose visuals include pictures of family members with the question: ‘Are you making your mum/grandad/partner/self proud?’

Results of the campaign have shown just this one element alone reached more than a million people.

Sian said: “We conducted research around the motivations of young people during the development of this campaign, which told us that most young people respond to not wanting to let down people they care about.

“Our research also strongly suggested that a ‘softly softly’ approach would not work with this age group.

“Because of this, we produced some powerful visuals aimed at getting young people to stop and think before they potentially let themselves, family members and communities down.

“A key element of the campaign was to let residents and local businesses know how to report anti-social behaviour.

“We wanted to reinforce the message that things are being done to tackle anti-social behaviour in these areas.”

Anna Hutton, MacMartin’s director of communications and behaviour change, said: “We are so proud to have been commissioned to create this campaign around a very important issue.

“Trying to change poor decisions before they happen is something that skilful marketing can achieve.

“Anti-social behaviour can affect everyone’s pride in their area, and we are aiming to help turn things around with our campaign.”