Sex and death to keep us well

Two recent Quebec ad campaigns use racy material to reach their audience. The shock value pays off

By Julia Cyboran

Last November, to coincide with World AIDS Day, the Quebec Health Ministry launched an AIDS awareness print-campaign guaranteed to raise eyebrows. Each of three ads featured a large stone sarcophagus. Life-sized carved figures sprawled on the lids depicted a male couple engaged in anal sex, a man and woman making love in the missionary position, and a beautiful young woman shooting up. The epitaph on each of the stones read: 'AIDS is still around, 1981 —'.

The campaign was targeted at "an audience of young and hip people who were out on the town. We needed to use images that would catch their attention," says Health Ministry spokesperson, Dominique Breton.

Around the same time, another group, COCQ-SIDA (Quebec's coalition of community-based groups working against AIDS), was developing a television campaign aimed at the same audience and also designed to shock. The 30-second spots, still running on Quebec television, begin with a close-up shot of two naked bodies intertwined. Loud techno music pulsates as the camera pans back to reveal that the writhing couple is squeezed into a pine coffin. One ad features a homosexual couple, the other shows heterosexuals. There is no voice-over.

The idea for the TV commercial was originally conceived by the Montreal advertising agency, Marketel during brainstorming sessions with the ministry. But the idea was deemed too risqué and, in the end, the government decided to go with just the print campaign. Subsequently, Marketel was approached by COCQ-SIDA and the agency again proposed the TV coffin concept. The coalition loved it and the agency produced the commercial for about a third of their usual cost. Taking a cue from Quebec TV station TVA, which to date has donated time worth close to $240,000, other local television stations donated free airtime for the ads.

CAMPAIGN RISK
So are the ads working? "With this campaign our goal was to remind people that AIDS is still around," says Marketel creative director, Gilles DuSablon. The main target audience is people between the ages of 24 and 35, who were too young in the 80s to fully understand the ravages of AIDS and are not taking the precautions they should.

"At first we were worried about releasing something with this much shock value, but we had a powerful and important message to get across, so we went with it," says Ms Pinault, COCQ-SIDA's director general. The shock tactic appears to be paying dividends.

A survey of the target age group done in February by the SOM survey agency revealed that 85% of people questioned were aware of at least one element of the two campaigns. Eighty-seven percent remembered the message "AIDS is still around."

Ms Breton, of the provincial Health Ministry, says five main points of the campaign stood out: they were clear, efficient, they hooked the audience, hit hard and made people think.

Ms Pinault, of COCQ-SIDA, adds that the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. "There were two or three negative comments within the group, but aside from that most of the feedback was encouraging — the message did make it across."

AIDS groups from Ontario and the neighbouring state of Vermont have both taken an interest in potentially using the campaigns, or taking them as inspiration for their own set of awareness campaigns.

What do you think? Would you put up similar posters in your practice to generate AIDS awareness? Email us at [email protected]