The brief
In 2021, Hearing Australia engaged us to help develop materials and drive media engagement as part of their national HAPEE program (Hearing Assessment – Early Ears).
With 1 in 3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids affected by serious ear and hearing troubles, HAPEE promotes awareness around early detection and hearing loss prevention through offering free diagnostic assessments to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who have not yet reached school age.
Our role was to develop a comprehensive range of materials to help with the program delivery on the ground. We also created the campaign’s tagline, ‘HAPEE Ears for Early Years’ featured throughout the materials.
As part of the program, HAPEE aims to upskill and support primary care providers, early education staff, and parents and carers with the ability to identify, manage and monitor potential hearing loss in young children. It was essential that these materials were engaging, useful, and spoke to stakeholders, parents and carers at a community level.
As part of the materials roll out and the program’s media and advertising output, we engaged ambassadors, Wiradjuri man, Luke Carroll (Actor and Playschool Presenter), and Gumbaynggirr, Dhungatti, Yamatji and Bibbulman woman, Emma Donovan (Musician), to draw on their lived experiences as parents and bring wider media and community attention to the topic of hearing loss in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids.
Video and Creative Production
To support the campaign, we produced several video products, including a 30-second television commercial and several videos for social media platforms. Video shoots took place at Hearing Australia centres located in Western Sydney and Cairns. We also coordinated a photoshoot with the campaign ambassadors and their children in Sydney, choosing a home setting to align most strongly with the community minded and family focused nature of the campaign.
The Impact
Increased awareness and prevention are at the heart of the HAPEE program. Delivered within a social and political landscape where communities were receiving higher than average amounts of health messaging due to COVID-19, it was vital we created materials and media discourse that cut through and made an impact about what continues to be an extremely important issue.
Overall, Hearing Australia enjoyed a significant increase in web traffic and the downloading of the newly developed HAPEE resources. Calls to their helpline also increased as a result of the media engagement.
HAPEE’s next phase will focus on partnering with Indigenous media outlets to gain deeper national traction, particularly across regional and remote communities, with a focus on access.
