AIDES and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners have just launched an innovative campaign to celebrate fun and safe sex. AIDES, the leading French HIV/Aids organisation and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GSP) are pleased to announce the launch of their latest campaign: “Sex condoms and cartoons”. Using cartoon imagery, it can be used in a variety of different ways using the written press, television, out-of-home and on the web but always with the same spirit of have fun, let yourself go and be safe!
An innovative and fun campaign with imaginative imagery
This project originated from a very simple idea: Even if using condoms is less taboo than it used to be, it is nevertheless still a cause of embarrassment in intimate settings.
Therefore the challenge for GSP was to find a clever way of taking the heat out of this complicated and awkward moment.
Wit rather than fear
We know now that fear tactics when dealing with HIV are not very effective. They are often unintelligible and stigmatising for HIV-positive people without even reaching their goal as prevention messages. Fear stigmatises, humour disarms. For a good many years now AIDES has celebrated joyful, acknowledged and complicit sex. GSP has opted for this approach and its “sex, condom and cartoons” privileges an uninhibited approach to sex and all sexual preferences. In short, love anyway you want just do it safely!
Naughty comics to convey the importance of using condoms
A series of comics, imagined by GSP and brought to life by famous illustrators, is addressed to the general public to release the tension surrounding the use of condoms. For example, in a street-art style the Brazilian illustrator Cristiano Siqueria reminds all those who “like it hot” that there is an easy way to protect oneself. Mike Kazaleh, the expert cartoon artist (The Simpsons, Futurama) delivers a dead pan kind of storey telling.
An animated film full of surprises: “He has 9 lives, do you?”
Smutley is an animated film which skilfully uses imagery from 1920s cartoons featuring a cat whose sexual partners are as numerous as they are wide-ranging. The greedy little Smutley sets his heart on anything with two legs, four hooves or a pair of webbed feet. But he does not practice safe sex for the simple reason that he has nine lives. But we have only one!
In a word, to enjoy sex in every shape and form, protect yourself! It will soon be broadcast on French television and probably has a brilliant future on YouTube.
An uninhibited theme park to explore
For those who find theme parks a bit too consensual and not sensual enough, GSP offers you a virtual visit of its imaginary SexLand, illustrated by the British artist Rod Hunt. The perfect opportunity to remind everyone that as far as sexuality is concerned, anything goes and that there’s someone for everyone. A map of SexLand will be distributed in a magazine participating in the event and to the visitors of the Sex Museum in New York. And for even more fun and games, GSP is working on adapting it as an iPad game.
This campaign has been designed in order to seduce as wide an audience as possible, so everyone can pass on the message: being open to condoms can give you all sorts of pleasure!
Press officer: Antoine Henry – 06 10 41 23 86 ahenry@aides.org www.aides.org
