This is an example of something fun being effective, but what about something that plays on the emotions in another way? Health stories in the press are full of these, whether it is a war veteran denied vital treatment despite fighting for his country, or a sick but ever-lively child raising a smile in a television charity campaign, or even shock stories about the next big health threat to the nation. The bottom line is that if you can get people emotionally involved in a subject they are more likely to be moved to act. Where possible, this consideration should be factored into every element of a communications campaign.

The theory behind the initiative is that teenagers are more likely to play games on computers or mobile phones than they are to watch educational programming. So Channel 4 is trying out ways to make the most of their education budget by experimenting in this area (more information on this in a detailed article by The Guardian).

There is a thriving industry out there of games developers making this software specifically for healthcare campaigns , as we discovered just by reaching out on Google. These games can be really effective, although there are a few golden rules we’d think would be essential:

•  Relevance: Pretty much rule number one. ‘Privates’ will work for a select audience of teenage boys, but as one commenter on The Guardian article put it nicely, “playing games inside a vagina … I wonder whether this will appeal more to boys than girls”. If the target audience in this case is girls (which we can only assume it is not), this is obviously a bad route. Similar Flash games suit audiences perfectly, like these particularly cute but shocking heart operation games by the British Heart Foundation. Children play games like this and would definitely engage in them
• Integrated publicity: Like any online health awareness campaign, there must be something driving traffic to the site, such as a wider public relations campaign with engaging spokespeople, patient case studies and the like
• Educational/recreational balance: Are the learning objectives going to be achieved best by a game or through peer to peer consensus around an issue, which might better be achieved through social networking or a more traditional media outreach focus? One issue with Flash games is whether the educational content will just be skipped through. If so, perhaps there is some ‘subconscious’ learning occurring, but if a game can have an unobtrusive, in-built evaluation mechanism (like a knowledge test), it would be an excellent way to ensure the objectives are achieved

There’s one further issue to consider with these games, and that’s the incompatibility of Flash with Apple iPods, iPhones and iPads. For some audiences, you might be better off developing an app, although the great thing about Flash is that you can use it on most computers by going to a webpage, rather than having to download an app.

The over-riding consideration to come back to is always that games like this can be good content, but without some strong educational context, ‘edutainment’ is at risk of becoming exactly what it’s detractors think it is. But if it’s done right, you have the potential to captivate a large new audience, and have a lot of fun at the same time.