Indiana Campus Sexual Assault Primary Prevention Project

The 10-Step Social Marketing Approach to Poster Design

1. Identify a problem associated with sexual assault specific to your campus.
Examples:
• "Alcohol is involved in a majority of sexual assaults on campus."
• "There is a need to increase students' bystander intervention knowledge and behaviors."
• "Students rarely obtain consent before having sex."
2. Based on the problem, determine your target audience (i.e., first-year students, male students, or fraternity/sorority students).
3. Draft messages that address the problem identified on your campus.
4. Solicit student input, as consumers of the campaign, throughout the message development process.
• Use residence halls, student groups, or academic classes to discuss issues related to sexual assault. This technique was used by Ball State University and Manchester College.
• Have students assist in the creation and/or evaluation of proposed messages, tag lines, and images. Indiana State University and Valparaiso University used this method.
• Collaborate with graphic arts students to design the poster's layout like Indiana University Southeast.
5. Revise and re-test messages and pre-test images using students who were not involved in the previous phase.
• How do students react to the message? What do they like/dislike about it?
• What do they think about the wording of the message?
• Does the proposed message match the proposed image?
• Provide a variety of images for students to offer input.
6. Make final adjustments to messages and images, based on student feedback.
7. Each poster should carry the same message to provide continuity and avoid confusion.
8. Print your posters.
9. Disseminate your posters through the appropriate channels.
• What persons and organizations have access to the target audience?
• Where will messages receive the most attention?
10. After the posters are disseminated, assess their general impact by randomly surveying students to get their reactions.
• Are students familiar with the campaign message?
• In what locations have students seen the posters?
• How have the posters made them think differently about the issue?

Messages can lose their effect over time and should be re-tested every year with new student populations.