STOP AIDS

The programme's marketing plan was designed to maximise behaviour change and individual responsibility through a series of products and messages promoting increased knowledge, awareness, and action. The programme's strategy included the use of billboards, print ads (in newspapers, tabloids, magazines, and student newspapers), television, radio, movie theatre commercials, and sporting events to deploy persuasive, gradually phased-in messages and mainstream imagery. Because media campaigns addressing drug use were found to be relatively ineffective due to their inability to influence drug availability or distribution, STOP AIDS concentrated its messages around preventing needle sharing and drug use among first-time users while making the connection between drug use and the spread of AIDS. The campaign also promoted the concept of mutual faithfulness among partners as an important means of protection from infection and as a complement to the central message of condom use.

The central strategy of this campaign used a positive message promoting individual awareness and self-determination, and avoided imposing a judgmental or moralistic view on any particular behaviour. The concept of mutual solidarity was also central to the campaign. With large-scale exposure on numerous television and print ads, the campaign sought to fight various forms of discrimination against those living with HIV/AIDS. The ads showed prominent Swiss personalities, elders, and AIDS victims making a public appeal for solidarity and the promotion of the basic human rights of dignity, equality, and respect.

Building on the Hot Rubber Program (organised by the Swiss AIDS Foundation in 1985), STOP AIDS made condoms the central focus of its campaign, promoting their use as the most reliable and effective method of preventing the spread of HIV. The campaign's logo incorporated a pink rolled condom within the STOP AIDS title, delivering a clear visual message about preventing HIV transmission. Initially, the condom was treated more as a neutral technical aid, but as the campaign evolved it was shown in its unrolled form placed over a model's thumb to illustrate its use for foreigners, tourists and adolescents that didn't understand the symbol's meaning. The STOP AIDS condom ads also featured young adults from different walks of life and sexual orientations to show their support for condom use and responsibility.

An informational brochure about the AIDS virus was mailed to every household in the country. Its main purpose was to confront the population with an official government recognition of the virus, to present the known facts about transmission, and to dispel some of the fear-inducing rumors that had developed out of media speculation.

An important element of the STOP AIDS campaign was its strategy of gradually phasing in different messages over a period of several years. This approach had the effect of allowing the population to slowly digest the information being presented while making subtle changes in attitude and behaviour.

HIV/AIDS