Turning public health expertise into everyday help.

The Public Health Agency and its partner organisations had extensive knowledge of drug and alcohol support. They needed a creative and technical partner who could understand that knowledge, shape it for different audiences and turn it into practical tools.

Some people needed a private way to reflect on their habits. Others needed a conversation, a clear explanation or help finding a local service. No single campaign or format could do every job.

Our role was to connect the expertise with the people who could benefit from it.

We worked directly with the Public Health Agency and led meetings in Belfast with local support organisations, including Start360, Contact Youth, ASCERT and FASA.

These conversations helped us understand the services available, the language people used and the challenges involved in asking for help.

The value we brought: turning conversations with specialists and frontline organisations into a clear creative direction, grounded in how support worked in practice.

We helped develop the Drugs and Alcohol NI branding and built its website, bringing information and resources together in one place.

As the work developed, we expanded the website’s signposting to help visitors find relevant support across Northern Ireland’s local Drug and Alcohol Coordination Team areas.

The site needed to serve people arriving with very different questions, from understanding their own behaviour to finding help for someone else.

The value we brought: a recognisable identity and a central resource that connected public-facing campaigns with useful information and local services.

Working with Ed Sipler, we helped bring Alcohol and You to life through a self-help workbook, online resources and campaign materials.

Our contribution was to take specialist ideas and give them a clear structure, approachable language and a design people could work through at their own pace.

We then helped develop Cannabis and You, applying the same care to a workbook for people concerned about their cannabis use.

These resources gave the information a life beyond an appointment or an awareness campaign. People could take it home, return to it and use it to reflect on their own circumstances.

The value we brought: translating expert knowledge into useful, approachable materials while preserving the substance behind the advice.

Alcohol units can be difficult to picture. We developed an app for Apple and Android devices that made the subject more tangible.

Users could add drinks to an interactive bar, build a picture of their weekly drinking and see their consumption expressed in units.

The interaction started with something familiar, the drinks themselves, and connected it to a measure that could otherwise feel abstract.

The value we brought: combining design and software development to turn public health information into a tool people could explore for themselves.

We helped support pop-up activities built around a physical bar, giving people an opportunity to explore their drinking habits through a face-to-face conversation.

We also developed measuring cups that showed how the amount poured related to alcohol units.

Together, the bar and cups made the subject visible and practical. People could look at a pour, compare it with their own habits and ask questions there and then.

The value we brought: extending the digital idea into a physical experience that public health teams could use to start useful conversations in the community.

Alongside the public-facing website, we helped develop the Responders App, a tool for people supporting others to identify relevant services and signpost appropriate help.

This work drew on our understanding of the service information and our ability to organise it into a useful digital format.

The value we brought: making service information easier to navigate at the point when someone needed to help another person.

We produced and ran television advertising for alcohol awareness campaigns, encouraging people to consider their drinking and directing individuals and families towards support.

We also worked with the Public Health Agency, PSNI and Crimestoppers on Drug Dealers Don’t Care, creating a series of videos highlighting the harm drugs cause within communities.

The campaign ran across social media, television and outdoor print advertising. Across the wider partnership, our work also included radio advertising and live events.

Each format had a different role, from catching attention to explaining an issue or encouraging someone to seek help.

The value we brought: the ability to carry a public health message from the initial idea through production and into the places where people would encounter it.

RAPID initiative and Steps to Cope artwork from the supplied project archive, alongside the resources and campaigns shown above.

Together, we created a connected collection of resources, tools and campaigns:

• A brand and website bringing drugs and alcohol information together.
• Self-help workbooks giving people space to reflect privately.
• An interactive app making weekly alcohol consumption easier to picture.
• Physical tools supporting conversations at community events.
• Digital signposting helping people find relevant services.
• Advertising bringing awareness and routes to support into everyday life.

Resources from this work remain in use, continuing to help people access information and find support.

For Creative 3 Media, the strength of the partnership was our ability to stay with an idea as it developed. We could help shape it in a meeting, design it as a workbook, build it into an app and bring it to a wider audience through advertising.

That gave the Public Health Agency a creative and technical partner with an understanding of both the subject and the people the work needed to reach.

And for us, it meant putting our skills to work close to home, helping the communities we live in access information and support when they needed it.