Ogilvy Brazil launched a provocative campaign for the NGO Life Support Group (GIV) featuring HIV-positive posters.
Each poster, placed around São Paulo contains a drop of blood from an HIV-positive individual. Since HIV can’t survive for more than an hour outside the human body, the posters are completely harmless, the idea being to show that, like the poster, individuals with HIV are not to be feared. This is exemplified in the tagline, “If prejudice is an illness, information is the cure.”
“The poster humanizes the problem and brings people together for the cause, showing that it’s possible to live in a prejudice-free society,” said Aricio Fortes, chief creative officer at Ogilvy Brazil. “And this thought is supported by the emotive reactions from people on the streets who read the poster and sympathized with it.”
In addition to the posters, the campaign also included an “HIV Positive Print Ad” in the Metro newspaper in São Paulo. Ogilvy Brazil wasn’t the only one to realize that HIV positive blood could be used in an awareness campaign. Vangardist, “a progressive men’s magazine based in Vienna and published in both English and German,” is running a limited-edition issue featuring a cover printed with HIV positive blood.