MTV x Public Health England
Youth, public health, broadcast partnership
Campaign strategy, UX, brand partnership, UI, build, display creative
MTV x Rise Above - A safe space for the questions teenagers don't ask out loud
A safe space for the questions teenagers don't ask out loud
A trusted youth brand and a public health campaign that needed each other
MTV partnered with Public Health England's Rise Above campaign to open up the conversations teenagers were having in their heads but not out loud. Questions about sex, relationships, body image, drugs, drinking. The brief was a digital space where young people could ask anything, see what others were asking, and find answers that felt like they came from someone who got it. The first round of design tried to bring the two brands together with a yellow palette borrowed from neither, and it showed. PHE came back clear: this needed to feel native to both brands, not a compromise between them. The deeper question wasn't about colour. It was whether young people would trust a space enough to ask the questions they wouldn't ask anyone else.
A partnership built around a single interactive wall
We rebuilt the design around Rise Above's brand language and let MTV's energy carry it. The centrepiece was a graffitied wall that loads from the centre and rewards exploration, with three categories spreading outward: relationships and sex, smoking drinking and drugs, body image and health. Hand-drawn questions sit next to illustrated portraits of young people checking their phones. Users submit their own questions, browse what others are asking, watch celebrity videos in-page, and click through to Rise Above for deeper content. Moderation happens behind the scenes so nothing inappropriate goes live. We finalised the MTV and Rise Above lockup, settled the hashtag to #MTVRiseAbove, and built a supporting display campaign of MPUs and banners across alcohol, relationships and everyday stress topics, each one opening with a question pulled from the wall.
