This ad is entirely in Swahili, but if you look up the term "Mpango Wa Kando" you can get the gist of the story: Two women in the market discuss one of them having an affair with a man. The woman tells her friend, the "adultress" that she should use a condom to protect herself and their families from sexually transmitted infections (HIV in particular).
From the YouTube comments:
The “Weka Condom Mpangoni” advert which features two women who openly admit something we fight to put under the carpet that yes there are married women with mpango wa Kando.
“One of the ladies inquires about the other’s husband and then immediately seeks to find out how her mpango wa kando is doing. The first lady then goes ahead to explain that even though her husband may be away, that does not mean that she miss out on “fun” since the other guy is readily available to provide it. The second lady then counsels her to always use condom whenever she’s having “fun” with her mpango wa kando”.
The Anglican Church and the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya protested the ad, claiming it was promoting promiscuity and infidelity rather than preventing HIV, and Kenya's Ministry of Public Health cancelled the ad's TV broadcast.
Had the clergy not interfered with it, the message would have reached millions of Kenyans and would have benefited even the youth and people already living with HIV. Whether you are married or not, using condoms in Kenya is challenging for most people as it carries the weight of stigma and many shy from buying them from shops.
Gladys (name changed) a married woman who admits having an extra marital affair tells me that sometimes she and her lover opt to have unprotected sex for fear of stigma in the community if anyone saw them buying condoms. "With or without the advert, thousands of married people have extra marital affairs and the clergy should not bury their heads in the sand. They should team up with the government to promote the prevention campaign," she asserts.
Kenya is the 4th most HIV/AIDS-affected nation in the world, with at least 100,000 new infections in Kenya annually. But heaven forbid we talk about safer sex, even outside of marriage.
Every once in a while, I happen upon an ad in the real world that makes me stop and ask WTF?
This one I spotted at the Rideau Centre, Ottawa's nexus of teenage wildlife. It's a campaign for The African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario (ACCHO) to encourage African, Caribbean and Black youth to get tested for HIV/AIDS.
The campaign site, getsexty.com, uses youthful images and language to explain the risks of HIV to s specific segment of Canadian youth.
But why "get sexty"? And why so much focus on smartphones?
What does that have to do with HIV prevention? Unless you're encouraging people to sext instead of having actual sex, not much. If I were to take a professional guess, it seems that this campaign is just trying too hard to jam as many youthful cultural references into its approach.
From the campaign site:
HT! HIG? You've just hit a totally dope site that speaks to African, Caribbean and Black youth about getting tested for HIV/AIDS. Whether you are a boy, a girl, trans, straight, lesbian, gay, bi, or questioning; Canadian-born or a newcomer ... this is all about you! Chill out and get some of the deetz on what you need to know about HIV/AIDS testing in Ontario. Before you go make sure you check out the resources section for more info on HIV testing, healthy relationships and sexuality. Don't be shy - this is a safe place to find information or to share it. So open up and let it rip!
The "get sexty" contest references smartphones and sexting superficially, but the promotion itself has little to do with either. You don't even enter by texting — it's a simple online form.
I hate to criticize a cause with such an important mandate, but it's a shame its advertising ends up not only coming across as clueless, but as unintentionally endorsing risky teen behaviour. Better luch next time, I guess...
Every once in a while, advertising actually catches me by surprise. I can honestly say I did not expect anything like this. It's weird as hell, but I will remember it.
In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called "Reassessing HIV Prevention" 10 AIDS experts concluded that "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa."
Let me quickly add that condom promotion has worked in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, where most HIV is transmitted through commercial sex and where it has been possible to enforce a 100 percent condom use policy in brothels (but not outside of them). In theory, condom promotions ought to work everywhere. And intuitively, some condom use ought to be better than no use. But that's not what the research in Africa shows.
Why not?
One reason is "risk compensation." That is, when people think they're made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.
Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it's possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it's those ongoing relationships that drive Africa's worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world's highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year.
These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.
So what has worked in Africa? Strategies that break up these multiple and concurrent sexual networks -- or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones. "Closed" or faithful polygamy can work as well.
In Uganda's early, largely home-grown AIDS program, which began in 1986, the focus was on "Sticking to One Partner" or "Zero Grazing" (which meant remaining faithful within a polygamous marriage) and "Loving Faithfully." These simple messages worked. More recently, the two countries with the highest HIV infection rates, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns that discourage people from having multiple and concurrent sexual partners.
Don't misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 "consensus statement" published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity. Moreover, liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.
No, I didn't expect the Christian Right to read all that either.
"Nigerian Sesame Street (Sesame Square) will address the biggest challenges faced by Nigerians…in addition to HIV/AIDS, also religion, gender inequality, AND Malaria. In one episode muppet ZOBI gets caught up in a mosquito net to teach kids how to use them and prevent a malaria infection because according to the World Health Organization, a child dies from the disease every 45 seconds."
Zobi, by the way, is an African version of Cookie Monster — except that he craves yams.
Kudos to Sesame Street for continuing to address uncomfortable issues that kids nonetheless have to deal with (I still remember when Mr. Hooper died). Although I was a little disappointed when they caved to uptight parental pressures on the bouncy Katy Perry musical number.
In this scenario, Zimbabwe is an adult-free playground for kids. But the fantasy is actually a nightmare.
No, it's not an ad for the new Logan's Run remake. It's an appeal by Italy's Associazione Amici di spagnolli, who work to help people in Africa, to do something about the AIDS epidemic that is killing Zimbabwe's future.
But they're not asking corporations or governments for this ransom. They're asking you. And the proceeds go to Keep a Child Alive - an AIDS charity that provides life-giving medicines to afflicted kids in the Third World.
Wednesday, you see, is World AIDS Day. And this "Digital Life Sacrifice" is a way of doing something important.
Let's put the importance of the cause aside for a moment. (Don't worry - we'll come back to it with all due respect.)
I'd like to take you back 25 years, to a charity concert for African food relief called Live Aid. Remember that? It was cool.
But I also remember being struck by a article later written by American conservative humourist PJ O'Rourke, which was published in his 1992 book Give War a Chance. Ever since, it has popped up in my mind whenever I am trying to grapple with my cynicism over certain celebrity acts of charity:
"As an example of charity, Live Aid couldn't be worse. Charity entails sacrifice. Yet Live Aid performers are sacrificing nothing. Indeed, they're gaining public adulation and a thoroughly unmerited good opinion of themselves. Plus, it's free advertising. These LPs, performances, and multiform by-products have nothing in common with charity. Instead they levy a sort of regressive alms tax on the befuddled millions. The performers donate their time, which is wholly worthless. Big corporations donate their services, which are worth little enough. Then the poor audience pledges all the contributions and buys all the trash with money it can ill afford. The worst nineteenth-century robber barons wouldn't have had the cheek to put forward such a bunco scheme. They may have given away tainted money, but at least they didn't ask you to give away yours."
It's hilarious, brutal, and insightful. (Remember when right-wingers were actually smart and self-deprecatingly funny?)
I've written before about my skepticism around celebrity campaigns, and this is where it comes from. While not of PJ's political persuasion, I still wonder why celebrities don't just cut a big fat cheque to the charity of their choice, rather than telling their fans to do it for them - occasionally through questionable organizations.
"Stick it Where The Streets Have No Name, bub!"
But as someone who has worked on a couple of "celebrity" PSAs, I know that there is another side to this. Cynicism aside, celebrities' time is valuable. And that value depreciates. Fast.
Unless you're Mick Jagger, or the late great Leslie Nielsen, you can expect your star to start fading within a few years at most. You have a hit, or do something grand, and the world is your oyster. But almost immediately, your clock starts ticking. And the further you get away from your last hit or moment of excellence, the less people care.
The less people care, the less celebrity you have. So you are under pressure to spend your diminishing capital as wisely as possible, and just as quickly. Your agent manages your public time to the minute, squeezing every last penny out of it. And what you give to charity? He or she can't really get paid on commission for that. So your charitable time becomes even more valuable when you give it away.
And there you have it. Gaga is giving away a precious piece of her fame so that kids in Africa can get well. Sure it would be more impressive if she actually went over there on her own dime and distributed the drugs out of pocket rather than pledging to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING online for a few days, but at the bottom line people still get what they need.
The remaining problem, however, is that fans do not have deep pockets. Whatever they give to this charity represents money they won't give to another. It's a sad thing to talk about in the cause marketing world, but the fact is they're all in competition for whatever you're willing and able to tithe yourself.
At least the Keep a Child Alive kids have this kind of fame monster on their side:
Have you ever asked yourself why we don't see more condom ads on TV? Well, apparently the big American television networks are afraid to air ads that encourage safer sex — creating a de facto "ban" on promoting one of the most important health products for sexually active people.
That is changing, apparently, just today as the AIDS Healthcare Foundation "breaks the rubber barrier" on daytime and primetime television with this horribly awkward PSA to be run during Oprah and Family Guy (now THERE's an odd pairing):
As the Make The Logo Bigger blog noted, "This is Real Talk feels anything but. The only connection with her show may be the markets the spot will run in (Los Angeles and Washington, DC), but it sure feels like something she would produce. Campy, awkward and full of the type of acting at home in a PSA from the 1950s."
It's like safer sex filtered through The Cosby Show — except that old Bill consistently railed against premarital sex whenever one of his kids was suspected of it. The writing is stiff, the acting forced, and the timing is obtuse.
And yet even this sappy approach to safer sex, as a bonafide PSA, is too much for some U.S. broadcasters. According to the AHF:
"AHF’s ‘This is Real Talk,’ PSA was also submitted for approval for airing on a number of other primetime and daytime programs in Los Angeles. All stations agreed the spot was suitable to air, although some stations stipulated that the spot could only run in certain dayparts, such as after 9pm or 10pm."
At least they're trying. Just earlier this month, the NY Times Parenting blog, Motherlode, looked at the way American culture views sexuality with fear and disgust when dealing with issues such as condoms.
"Rachel Phelps (who works at Planned Parenthood in the United States) concludes that while American parents, advertisers and public-service announcements aim to scare teens, those in Europe are matter of fact and humorous.
'The idea is that sex is like a big industrial fire — dangerous, scary and bad,' Phelps writes. 'And having sex without a condom is like fighting a big industrial fire naked — very bad. But does that mean that having sex with a condom is like fighting a big industrial fire in a spacesuit? Not very appealing. Why would this image motivate teenagers to use condoms?'"
You think she's joking? Check this out:
This is from a slideshow on Slate that contrasts European condom ads — which playfully celebrate sexual pleasure — with American sexophobia.
Let's hope that the "Real Talk" PSA's awkward first steps into mainstreaming the safer sex conversation in America are the beginning of a slippery slope. I'd love to see the faces of the abstinence-only education parents when they see spots like these crop up during Dancing with the Stars:
Reader Bonnie sent me a link to this awesomely awkward 1969 PSA from the Ad Council, reminding all of the recently liberated flower children (and their parents, and librarians, and even their kid sisters, apparently) that they may have shared more than peace and love...
Dig the catchy jingle and pure innocence of a pre-AIDS sexual health PSA. Enjoy the love-in while it lasts, my groovy friends...
Not even a social issues marketing blog is immune from Godwin's Law, which states "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"...
Well, here it is. An ad by Germany's das comitee that compares AIDS to Hitler:
And here it is in German:
The steamy TV ad can be seen here: (warning: there's even more nudity and sex in it)
So, is this more, less, or just as justified as the rejected World Trade Center WWF ads that I blogged last week? Does 60+ years make a historical event less inappropriate as a PSA hook?
Personally, I just find this shock ad a little creatively lazy. The reason Godwin's Law is an internet meme is because invoking Hitler or Nazis in a non-WWII-themed discussion is seen as a lazy troll tactic. Is this ad any better, just because it's for an important cause?
If shock ads are what it takes to further raise AIDS awareness in the 21st century, I prefer the French approach.
UPDATE: Vice Magazine covers the PR hitlerf*ck of the agency's explanation. (via @Copyranter)
