Today in Vienna at the International AIDS Conference we finally unveiled the results of the Ignite campaign that we’ve been so excited about.

You can download the full Ignite evaluation as a PDF at the bottom of this post but for all of you who would like it in brief, have a look at some of the evaluation highlights below:

Photo: Kemara Pol/UNICEF 20 July 2010 Vienna, Austria International AIDS Conference.

Dr Dina Borzekowski, the professor from Johns Hopkins University who led the evaluation explained that a good health campaign would have exposure of about 10% of the population.  In Zambia, the percentage of young people who had heard of the Ignite campaign was around 7% but only 4% had actually seen Shuga. Trinidad did slightly better with 15% being aware of the campaign, but still only 8% had seen Tribes.

In Kenya, where we filmed Shuga, an astounding 64% of young people 15-24 were aware of the campaign and 60% saw it and remembered it.

Bill Roedy, Chief Executive MTV, Jimmy Kolker, chief of HIV/AIDS, UNICEF, and Ambassador Goosby, Global Coordinator of PEPFAR, sat on the panel for today’s panel with “Dr Dina’ (as we affectionately call her) and our very own head of the campaign and executive producer of Shuga and Tribes, Georgia Arnold.

Despite the fact that it was early in the morning, there was a good turnout – not surprising as mysteriously there was a media advisory going round that dubbed Shuga as making Sex and the City look like Sesame Street.

So what else did the raunchy show do? Well in Kenya, and also among the Zambian viewer groups, there were increased intentions to take an HIV test, decreased intentions to be in a concurrent relationship and increased positive attitudes relating to HIV stigma. More importantly, over 90% of the young people in Kenya viewer group said the show had an effect on their thinking.

You can read and download the report here:

MTV EVALUATION SUMMARY

But the biggest news that came out of the conference is that we’re doing Shuga 2!  And if you thought Shuga 1 was breaking barriers – just wait until you see the sequel!

Watch this space.