http://www.storygas.com/2009/06/uk-safe-sex-campaign-wasted-money.html

That budget is for the TV campaign which has nothing to do with the online.
I think also it’s blatantly obvious that £4.6 million hasn’t been spent. Other wise you’d have seen it everywhere.
It’s a fantastic piece of work and I think the fact the characters interact with you via text or phone call is genius. That’s making the audience the star of the show if you ask me.

First and foremost, I would flip the funnel (to use a Seth Godin expression):

Teens seem to be great content producers; look at YouTube and you’ll see how creative they can be. Focusing the campaign on encouraging them to take action and create videos that talk about what it’s like to be a teenager today; school, friendship, sex, drugs. Guide the conversation, give them themes to create voxpops about, but let them talk about the issues that matter to them. The right messages will bubble up to the surface eventually.

Make them the real stars of the campaign rather than using actors. Pride in their micro-fame means they’ll be naturally and virally talking about it with friends, spreading the word more successfully than a single agency with limited time and resources can achieve.

The tricky part is making the idea appealing enough to get the first few on board, but once they’re on, they can convince their peers to take part much better than any of us grownups ever could.

This scares most marketing agencies as it requires handing the control over to the community; who knows what could happen! However, if the campaign is well-managed and nurtured, it could be more of a success than they’d ever dreamed of.

ps Great blog. I found you through Liz@violetposey.

I don’t mean this as a challenge to you. I really am curious how a campaign would legitimately communicate with teens.