AIDS Council of NSW covers Sydney in condoms in a campaign aiming to help end HIV via Frost*

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Frost_Stay Safe_2.jpgFrost* has covered Sydney in condoms, with a new campaign created for the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON).

 

The Stay Safe campaign is one of the three components of Ending HIV (which also includes Test More and Treat Early to be deployed early 2014) and aims at creating a dialogue with gay men that reinforces condom use as a key factor in ending the HIV epidemic. It continues on from the agency’s Ending HIV work, which launched during Mardi Gras in March.

Frost_Stay Safe_1.jpgACON, NSW’s and Australia’s largest community-based gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) health and HIV organisation, wanted to build on the success of Ending HIV phase one, by engaging with gay men about condoms. In addition to testing more and treating early, condom use is a vital aspect of a broader project that aims to Frost_Stay Safe_3.jpgend new transmission of HIV in Australia by 2020. 30 years into the epidemic, condom reinforcement messages have generated ‘HIV fatigue’ amongst the target audience. This is the time to reposition condoms, not only as the best way of protecting yourself and your partners, but as Frost_Stay Safe_4.jpgimportantly, to serve the bigger cause of ending the epidemic by 2020.

 

The response from Frost* has been to create an outdoor campaign which will saturate inner Sydney and uses humour to make the topic of condoms fun and engaging. The bold, black and white, typographic aesthetic of the earlier Ending HIV campaign has been retained for the Stay Safe work. For this initiative, it has been evolved with the addition of illustrative condoms slipped over some of the letterforms of amusing headlines, with the condoms becoming part of the campaign’s visual language.

 

In a continuation of the messages communicated in the Ending HIV campaign, the Stay Safe work aims not Frost_Stay Safe_5.jpgonly to encourage gay men to use condoms to protect themselves and their partners, but to put condom use front and centre of their personal contribution to ending HIV by the end of the decade.

 

Vince Frost, founder and executive creative director of Frost*, says it was emboldening to be a part of the success of the Ending HIV Frost_Stay Safe_6.jpgproject.

 

Says Frost: “It was thrilling and validating to work with ACON on such a successful campaign. Stay Safe is another piece of the big picture goal of ending HIV in Australia and we’ve worked hard to leverage that success for another campaign, which we hope will be truly behavior changing.”

 

The Stay Safe campaign will roll out with metro-light posters and city flag banners across the CBD and inner city this week, supported by a strong two-month online and social media plan. The work has also been applied to promotional collateral for experiential activations, on temporary tattoos, condoms, t-shirts and tote bags.

This work is the fifth campaign Frost* has developed for ACON and has lead to a host of other upcoming HIV and AIDS related projects, including World AIDS Day in December for ACON, and a roll out of the Ending HIV creative for the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO). Frost’s ‘Slip it On’ campaign for ACON is exhibited in the Museum of Sex in New York City.

Client: AIDS Council of NSW (ACON)

Creative Agency: Frost*

Executive Creative Director: Vince Frost

Creative Director: Ant Donovan

Design Director: Benjamin Hennessy

Designers: Graziela Machado

Senior Account Manager: Charlotte Brady