Moving Beyond Excuses: Eastern European Ad Campaign Promotes Condom Use

HIV/AIDS is spreading faster in Eastern Europe than it has anywhere else in the world.

But sophisticated young people in the region can give any number of reasons for not wearing condoms to protect themselves.

"I'm embarrassed," admits one tough-looking hipster.

"I like it natural," says a guy in black with tattoos running clear up his arm.

"We trust one another," say young lovers, holding each other close.

Confronting such attitudes head on is the thrust of a new ad campaign supported by UNFPA and produced by Population Services International, a Washington-based social marketing organization.

"What's Your Excuse?" is the slogan of the campaign. Its tag line: "There is no excuse. Wear condoms."

The campaign, aimed at 15-25 year olds, includes ads, posters, t-shirts, television and radio commercials, and condom packaging. All use dark, edgy photography and sexy, somber models. It was launched at a sports and music event at Lake Ada, in Belgrade in April 2003, with some 100,000 young people attending, and in Sofia, Bulgaria in May. It will soon reach Bosnia and Herzegovina. Volunteers who distributed flyers in 11 cities during the launch said they liked the campaign because it was grounded in the reality of young people's experience and feelings.

Research has shown that attitudes, more than cost, keep the region's young people from using condoms. "What's Your Excuse?" is just one of several social marketing campaigns with attitude that are designed to promote safer behaviour among youth in Eastern Europe. "I Do What I Want, But I Know What I'm Doing" is the slogan of another UNFPA-supported campaign that targets Albanian youth.

Using condoms to prevent sexually transmitted infections is a critically important and timely message for the region. HIV prevalence, while increasing exponentially, still affects less than 1 per cent of the population in Eastern European countries.

HIV/AIDS initially took off in the region by needle sharing among injecting drug users. But it is now increasingly spread through sexual transmission and is quickly infecting the general population. Sexual transmission is facilitated by the high prevalence of other sexually transmitted infections in Eastern Europe. Drug use has become increasingly common since the borders of the former Soviet Union opened.

Several Central European countries, where well-designed HIV/AIDS prevention programmes are in place, have managed to curtail the epidemic among injecting drug users, and prevent it from spreading widely.

Convincing young people to avoid risky sexual behaviour is UNFPA's priority focus for the region. "Right now the window of opportunity in Eastern Europe is closing and HIV is reaching epidemic proportions," says Dr. Aleksandar Bodiroza, an adolescent reproductive health and HIV/AIDS specialist for UNFPA. "By focusing on and bringing to scale behaviour change interventions, we may be able to save hundreds of thousands of young lives." Currently, only 40 per cent of in-school and 3 per cent of out-of-school youths in the region are reached by behaviour change programmes, he added.

Marketing campaigns like "What's Your Excuse" represent one behaviour change strategy that UNFPA supports to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. Other approaches include peer education and ensuring the availability of "youth-friendly" reproductive health services.

--Omar Gharzeddine