Problem to Solve

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Timmins, Ontario has become an epicenter for the Canadian opioid crisis.

And although everyone in the community is affected, the stigma around opioids and the misconceptions around treatment is harmful, making the situation worse. 

We needed to educate the community and debunk the myths around opioid treatment before “Safe Health Site Timmins" (SHST) opened its doors to the public.

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Solution

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To much of Timmins, harm-reduction clinics are considered a place to hang out and abuse drugs. Pulling on heartstrings wouldn’t work with this audience. Instead, we needed to catch them off guard in an unexpected way to bypass their knee-jerk negative reactions to harm-reduction addiction care.

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To spark their curiosity, we played off the "SHST" acronym drawing on well-known “SH*T” idioms, and plastering them all over Timmins - from social media, to the iconic McIntyre headframe, to posters in local hospitals. Provocative headlines invited the local community to learn more at the campaign website, where we debunked common myths, like “supervised health sites are a waste of money” or “addicts are criminals, why are we helping them?”.  Helping them realize SHST is the key to a safer city for everyone and hopefully save lives. 

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