Evaluating TikTok Influencers as Trusted Messengers for Sexual Health Communication

Challenge

Santé publique France, France’s national public health agency, promotes prevention across a wide range of topics, including alcohol, tobacco, drug use, physical inactivity, nutrition, sexual health and mental health. To promote onSEXprime.fr, its sexual health information website for teenagers, they sought to understand whether TikTok influencers could offer an effective, credible and low-risk way to reach young people.

This campaign deliberately adopted a less institutional approach by placing influencers at the forefront while keeping the public health agency largely in the background. Through humorous videos inspired by everyday interactions between parents, siblings and friends, the campaign aimed to encourage young people to visit a trusted source of sexual health information.

While this approach offered the opportunity to reach audiences that are often difficult to engage through traditional public health campaigns, it also raised several important questions:

• Would the campaign be perceived as credible despite the agency's limited visibility?
• Would influencers reinforce the public health message or overshadow it?
• Could discussing intimate topics on social media expose Santé publique France to reputational risks?
• Would the campaign generate meaningful engagement, or simply entertain audiences?

Santé publique France needed robust evidence to assess both the effectiveness of this innovative communication strategy and the risks associated with it.

Approach

Verian designed a bespoke evaluation combining quantitative and qualitative analysis of approximately 7,000 comments posted under the campaign's TikTok videos.

Given the distinctive characteristics of young people's language on social media - including slang, humour, irony, cultural references, emojis and platform-specific conventions-we chose a human-led analysis rather than relying on automated sentiment analysis. This approach ensured a more accurate interpretation of online conversations.

Our methodology included:

• Collecting and organising all comments and associated metadata;
• Manually coding the entire dataset using a bespoke analytical framework developed specifically for this study, following an approach similar to open-ended survey response analysis;
• Measuring the volume and nature of engagement across different videos and influencers;
• Conducting an in-depth qualitative analysis of written comments relating to the campaign themes or the onSEXprime.fr website, beyond simple emoji reactions;
• Assessing potential reputational risks, including message distortion, criticism directed at the public health agency and negative reactions to the campaign.

This mixed-method approach enabled us not only to measure engagement with the campaign, but also to understand how young people interpreted the content and interacted with one another.

Impact

The evaluation demonstrated that the campaign successfully achieved its objectives while presenting a very low level of reputational risk for Santé publique France.

Key findings included:

• Young people actively engaged with the videos rather than simply scrolling past them;
• Humour and relatable everyday situations encouraged discussion and the sharing of personal experiences;
• The campaign stimulated peer-to-peer conversations about sexual health;
• The prevention message retained its credibility despite the agency's deliberately low-profile presence;
• No significant backlash or major reputational risks were identified.

The evaluation also generated valuable insights for future campaigns. While influencers substantially increased reach and engagement, their personal visibility sometimes exceeded that of the public health brand, limiting awareness of the onSEXprime.fr website. These findings provide practical guidance on achieving a better balance between influencer visibility and institutional branding in future communication strategies.

More broadly, this study demonstrates that, when carefully selected and integrated into a rigorously evaluated communication strategy, influencers can serve as trusted messengers for public health information, enabling institutions to reach young audiences in the digital spaces where they naturally consume content.