Commissioning a public health campaign video looks straightforward until you sit down to write the brief. You have a behaviour you want to change, a budget set by procurement, an evaluation framework that has to stand up to scrutiny, and a population that does not respond as a single block. Twenty years of campaign work across Irish public health has taught us that the difference between a video people remember and a video that actually shifts behaviour is rarely about production polish. It is about how the message is framed, who it is built for, and how honestly you plan to measure it.
This piece is for HSE programme managers, Department of Health communications teams, and the agencies pitching for public-health tenders who have to commission against measurable outcomes. The aim is practical. By the end you should know what separates a strong public health campaign video production in Ireland from a costly one that disappears the week after launch.
There is a long history of treating health video as a broadcast asset: produce a polished film, buy media, hope awareness translates into action. Awareness is the easy part. Getting someone to book a screening, finish a vaccination course, cut down on alcohol, or attend a follow-up appointment is a behavioural problem, and behavioural problems need behavioural design.
Good HSE behaviour change video work starts with a model, usually some version of the COM-B framework (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour) or the behaviour change wheel that underpins much of the HSE’s own social marketing practice. You are not just informing. You are removing a barrier, prompting an action at the right moment, or reframing a perceived norm. The creative decisions follow from that, not the other way round.
When a brief lands on our desk that opens with “we want a two-minute video explaining X”, the first conversation we have is about what behaviour the video is meant to move and what specifically is stopping people from doing it today. You’d be surprised how often that question reshapes the entire production.
The temptation with health messaging is to frighten people into compliance. The evidence is mixed at best, and fear framing carries real risks: it can trigger defensiveness, fatalism, or stigma, particularly with audiences who already feel judged. Two decades in, our default position is to lead with efficacy rather than threat. People act when they believe the action is doable and worth it, not simply when they understand the danger.
Framing choices that consistently matter:
The single most common weakness we see in a health campaign video brief is the phrase “the general public”. There is no such person. A cervical screening campaign reaches a 25-year-old in full-time work, a 60-year-old who has never been screened, a woman whose first language is not English, and someone with a disability who needs the clinic to be physically accessible before any message lands. The same script cannot serve all of them well.
Segmentation does not always mean four separate films. Sometimes it means one hero film plus tailored cut-downs, different voices, or platform-specific edits. The discipline is deciding up front which segments carry the highest burden of the target behaviour and building the production plan around reaching them.
This is where a structured approach pays back. A campaign designed for modular reuse from day one costs far less over a multi-year programme than commissioning fresh from scratch each time the funding cycle resets. For more on how this thinking applies across patient-facing and clinical work, our medical and healthcare video production work follows the same principle: produce once, deploy well, measure properly.
Public sector commissioning sits under a clear set of obligations, and accessibility is one of the places a campaign can fall down in audit even when the creative is strong. The European Web Accessibility Directive and the Disability Act 2005 set expectations for public bodies, and the Official Languages Act carries Irish-language duties that apply directly to State communications.
For public sector health video production, that translates into concrete requirements you should specify in the brief rather than discover at delivery:
Building these in from the start is cheaper and cleaner than retrofitting. An Irish-language version planned at script stage is a translation and a voice session; the same version commissioned after the English edit is locked often means re-edits, re-timing, and a renegotiated budget. Specify it in the brief and the production company can price it honestly.
Public money invites public questions. A campaign that cannot show what it achieved is vulnerable at the next budget review, and the people asking will not accept “it got a lot of views” as evidence of changed behaviour. The strongest social marketing video in Ireland is evaluated against outcomes that were defined before launch, not assembled afterwards to flatter the result.
A defensible evaluation framework usually layers three levels:
The honest truth is that attributing a behaviour change to a single video is difficult, because campaigns run alongside clinical access, policy, season, and news cycles. That is not a reason to avoid measurement; it is a reason to design it carefully, agree the limits with the evaluation team early, and report transparently. A campaign that says “uptake rose by X, and here is what we can and cannot attribute to the video” is far more credible than one claiming a clean causal line nobody believes.
Make the production company part of the measurement conversation, because creative decisions affect what you can track. Unique landing pages, campaign-specific phone numbers, trackable QR codes, and consistent calls to action across every cut all need to be designed in. If the brief treats evaluation as a separate workstream that starts after delivery, the video will not be built to support it.
Pulling it together, the briefs that lead to effective campaigns share a common spine. If you are commissioning, or pitching to commission, these are the sections worth getting right:
A brief built this way does more than guide a vendor. It protects the programme, because every creative choice is traceable back to a behavioural objective and a measurement plan. That is what accountability looks like in practice.
Cost depends on the asset architecture rather than a single day rate. A campaign built around one hero film with modular cut-downs, captions, an Irish-language version, and ISL provision sits in a different bracket to a single talking-head video. The most useful step is to scope the full deliverable set, including accessibility and language versions, before requesting a quote, so the production company can price the complete programme rather than the headline film alone.
State communications carry obligations under the Official Languages Act, so Irish-language provision should be assumed for HSE and Department of Health campaigns unless legal advice says otherwise. Plan it at script stage as a parallel version or subtitled cut. Building it in early is considerably more efficient than commissioning an Irish version after the English edit is locked.
Through a layered framework agreed before launch: process measures (reach and completion), intermediate outcomes (recall, attitude and intention shift via pre and post surveys), and behavioural outcomes (screening uptake, calls, appointments) tied to baseline data. Trackable calls to action, unique landing pages and campaign-specific phone numbers should be designed into the production so the data is available to evaluate.
Evidence on fear appeals is mixed, and they can trigger defensiveness or stigma in the audiences you most need to reach. Our experience favours leading with self-efficacy and social norms, showing the behaviour as doable and already common, with a single clear action. Threat framing has its place for some detection behaviours, but it needs careful handling and rarely works as the whole strategy.
Accountability and accessibility are far more demanding. A public sector brief has to specify Irish-language and ISL provision, accessibility standards, plain-language scripting tested for health literacy, and an evaluation framework that will survive public scrutiny. The creative also has to be traceable back to a defined behavioural objective, because the spend is public and the outcomes will be questioned.
Twenty years of campaign work comes down to a simple idea: treat health video as a strategic, accountable discipline and it earns its budget; treat it as a one-off broadcast asset and it rarely does. If you are scoping a behaviour change campaign and want a production partner who understands message framing, segmentation, accessibility, and evaluation from the brief stage onward, get in touch with One Productions for a straightforward conversation about what your programme needs.
By Tom Hopkins, One Productions
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