Seven of the world’s biggest advertising agencies have joined forces to produce commercials for an HIV and Aids awareness campaign which will launch on World Aids Day this Friday.
The set of 24 ads will be shown on MTV channels globally, as well as on the music channel’s web and mobile platforms, and are being offered to third-party broadcasters.
Creative teams at the agencies were given a free hand to raise awareness of three basic safe-sex principles — abstinence, fidelity and condom use — to produce messages that would appeal to a young audience worldwide.
Creative executions range from copulating fingers and thumbs to a song about what happened to consecutive owners of a clapped-out car. In one commercial, a series of bald men are seen playing with the theme that a bald guy with a hole in his head can’t think.
Gary Goldsmith, the CEO of Y&R North America, which has produced a spot in which a fashionable couple meet in a cafe and end up playing Russian roulette, said: “When it comes to sex, people are going to do whatever they want to do.
“Our job isn’t to judge, but to remind them to do whatever they’re doing safely.”
The commercials are part of HIV and Aids awareness campaign Turn on TV, the brainchild of Bill Roedy, the vice-chairperson of MTV Networks and chair of the Global Media Aids Initiative. The project was launched by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, in January 2004.
So far, more than 150 media companies from 76 countries have got involved with the project by integrating Aids awareness messages into their programming.
Roedy joined forces with WPP chief executive, Martin Sorrell, to launch this latest initiative to advertising creatives at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes earlier this year.
Seven agencies agreed to offer their services for free, including Cake, 180 Amsterdam, Wieden & Kennedy 12, Lowe Worldwide, Young & Rubicam and Ogilvy & Mather.
The Turn on TV spots can be seen online from December 1 via staying-alive.org – Guardian Unlimited Â