83. STRATEGY ADVERTISING & DESIGN
With a new increase in AIDS cases and decreasing awareness of the dangers of unsafe sex, Strategy Advertising devised an integrated poster campaign for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation highlighting safe sex. The foundation wanted a highly visible campaign that would publicly appeal to both genders, but could also be targeted to gay clubgoers.

“The idea was to create a sexually appealing photograph that would attract attention, using a ring device symbolic of a condom,” says Douglas Maclean, of Strategy. “The ring was brightly colored to contrast with the crisp, black-and-white photography. Simply changing the colors on the press allowed for all sorts of innovative patterning in outdoor paste-ups.”

Creative director Guy Pask says, “We wanted to capture people in a sexual mindset and remind them about condom use, but in a very understated way. Our preference for simple, strong images that make you think played an important role—as did our desire not to go down an obvious ‘doom and gloom’ road.”

The biggest challenge the Strategy team faced was in trying to appeal to both a gay and straight audience with the same imagery. And they were treading a fine line, aware that it had to be appropriate for use in outdoor media in family-dominated suburbs, but eyecatching enough to compete with promotional material in gay clubs.

Strategy experienced perhaps the greatest compliment to any firm’s work—the pieces were often stolen. “It’s hard to evaluate any actual results given the long-term nature of the objectives in helping to change people’s attitudes,” says Maclean. “However, the campaign did attract a high degree of awareness and was successful in bringing the issue to the fore, once again.” Marcy Slane