Information regarding the Scottish Government’s marketing and communications activity for the SARCS (Sexual Assault Response Coordination Service) campaign: FOI release

Information requested

Information regarding the Scottish Government’s marketing and communications activity for the SARCS (Sexual Assault Response Coordination Service) campaign:

1. Total campaign spend

• Total budget allocated to the SARCS marketing campaign for each financial year since its launch
• Total actual spend for each financial year
• Any overspend or underspend recorded against the allocated budget

2. Breakdown of expenditure

• For each year, please provide a breakdown of spend by category, including but not limited to:
• Digital advertising (social media, search, programmatic, display)
• Outdoor advertising (billboards, transport, posters)
• Broadcast media (TV, radio, streaming)
• Print media
• Creative development and production costs
• Agency fees
• Research, testing, or evaluation costs

3. Procurement and decision‑making

• Names of external agencies or contractors involved in the SARCS campaign
• Procurement route used (e.g., framework, direct award, competitive tender) Copies of contracts or statements of work relating to the campaign (with redactions as required)

4. Internal documentation

• Internal briefings or strategy documents relating to the SARCS campaign Evaluation reports or performance summaries
• Any internal correspondence discussing the campaign’s objectives, messaging, or budget

5. Campaign performance

• Key performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure campaign success Results against those KPIs
• Any post‑campaign analysis

Response

1. Total Campaign Spend

Budget Allocated and Actual Spend

Financial Year	Budget Allocated	Actual Spend	Variance
2021-2022	£165,000	£157,567.31	Underspend £7,432.69
2022-2023	£260,000	£260,384.87	Overspend £384.87
2023-2024	£100,000	£68,809.08	Underspend £31,190.92
2024-2025	£100,000	£98,635.00	Underspend £1,365.00
2025-2026	£125,000	£111,416.13	Ongoing

2. Breakdown of Expenditure

The following table provides a breakdown of spend by category for each financial year:

Category	2021-22	2022-2023	2023-2024	2024-2025	2025-2026
Digital advertising		£120,194.73	£18,108.98	£39,665.00	£35,049.23
Outdoor advertising		£99,310.85	£16,527.89	£19,751.00	£17,854.10
Broadcast media			£15,312.21
Print media					£6,445.85
PR (including PR agency fees)	£15,000.00	£5,400.00	£5,930.00	£20,984.00	£15,724.00
Creative development and production of campaign materials (including creative agency fees)	£131,080.31	£23,021.29	£12,930.00	£18,235.00	£33,354.13
Research, testing or evaluation costs	£11,487.00	£12,458.00			£1,134.00

3. Procurement and Decision Making

External Agencies and Contractors

The following external agencies and contractors were involved in the SARCS campaign:

• The Leith Agency – creative services
• Smarts (NI) Limited – PR services
• Progressive Partnership Ltd – marketing research services
• Republic of Media – media planning and buying services
• APS Group (Scotland) Ltd – print and distribution services

The activity is commissioned through contracts called off from the frameworks as outlined below.

Procurement Routes

Contract	Agency	Procurement Route
Safer - Creative	The Leith Agency	Call off from the Marketing Services Framework
Safer - PR	Smarts (NI) Limited	Call off from the Marketing Services Framework
Safer – Marketing Research Services	Progressive Partnership Ltd	Call off from the Marketing Services Framework
Safer, Net Zero, Smarter, Wealthier and Fairer – Media	Republic of Media	Call off from the Media Planning and Buying Framework
Print and Distribution	APS Group (Scotland) Ltd	Commissioned on Publishing, Print and Associated Services Framework

Copies of contracts or statements of work relating to the campaign

The above contracts are let on a duration basis against general requirements dependent on the particular portfolio and do not provide detail on activity subsequently commissioned for individual campaigns. In order to answer this question, please find attached the relevant marketing briefs, which function as statements of work for each campaign phase. 

Please note that the attached briefs have been redacted to include only the sections directly relevant to your request.

Attached documents:
25-26 - SARCS - Marketing Brief
24-25 - SARCS - Marketing Brief
23-24 - SARCS - Marketing Brief
21-22 - SARCS - Marketing Brief

4. Internal Documentation

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that in order to locate and retrieve that information, we would need to conduct a search of all records held by the Scottish Government.

Having conducted various searches to fully explore the scope of your request, we have ascertained that the number of documents returned is such that the costs of reviewing this information to establish relevance would exceed the cost limit. Under section 12 of FOISA, public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request to reduce the time it would take to respond to your request. For example, you could specify particular documents or restrict your request to a specific time period or business area, which would allow us to limit the scope of the relevant searches.

5. Campaign Performance

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Results Against KPIs

Please note, some documents included in this response contain preliminary SMART objectives developed during campaign planning. The objectives below represent the final versions, which were confirmed once the scope and delivery of the campaign had been determined.

2022-2023

SMART Objective (by end of April 2022)	Target	Result
Prompted Campaign Recall	40%	43%
Proportion of recognisers agreeing that they have a better understanding of where to find options for help and support after rape or sexual assault	50%	94%
Aware of the Sexual Assault Response Coordination Service (SARCS)	18% (10pp increase)	14% (recognisers 27%)
Proportion of recognisers agreeing the advertising makes them think contacting SARCS is something they can do if they needed to	50%	94%

2023-2024

SMART Target to be achieved by Nov 2023	Target	Result
Maintain awareness of SARCS among the target audience at a level of 12%-14%	12-14% (August 2023)	23% (+9%)
Achieve 7M impressions / opportunities to see	7M	7.2m combined figure
Deliver 17,500 clicks to site from paid media only	17,500 clicks	14,793 clicks

2024-2025

SMART Target to be achieved by Dec 2024	Target	Result
Increase awareness of SARCS among target audience (18-44 year olds) from 23% to 28% (+5% points)	28% (+5%)	26% for 18-44 year olds achieved (+3%); 32% achieved 18-32 year olds
Achieve 7.5m impressions / opportunities to see (increase from 7.2m in 2023)	7.5m	9.62m
Engagement objective – Achieve 45% view through rate (VTR) on YouTube (41% achieved in 2023)	45% VTR	87% VTR
Deliver 16,000 clicks to NHS Inform site from paid for media only (14,700 achieved in 2023)	16,000	16,000

Post-Campaign Analysis

Attached document:

21-22 - SARCS - Progressive Report

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FOI 202500497828 - Information released - Annex

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