Condom usage in India is very low, with only 15-20% of sexually
active people using them. The problem was that anything associated
with sex is taboo in public, and the word "condom" connotes
negative associations with HIV and immoral behaviour. The BBC World
Service Trust, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
wanted to get people to accept condoms and remove the stigma
attached to them.
The key aim was to get people to say the word condom aloud in
public without taboo. If they couldn't say the word, they were
never going to ask for condoms at the pharmacy. Quantitative and
qualitative research done by the AIDS Foundation, showed that men
who talk about sex and condoms freely are more likely to be
consistent condom users.
BBC World Service Trust adopted a strategy to get people to say
the word "condom" aloud in public and start discussions bout them.
Media, in addition to the ads on air, took on the task to act as a
catalyst to make condoms an acceptable word. The campaign started
with a contest where the consumer had to answer a riddle, the
answer to which was the word "Condom". The contest was aired on
several TV channels, radio stations and cinema halls. Consumers had
to call a voice portal and say the correct answer to win prizes. As
the second leg, we created a buzz by leveraging the creative in
which the words "Kabbadi" used by the players in a popular local
sport got replaced with the word "CONDOM". We got editorials in
publications and radio anchors to report a fictitious tournament in
which the players actually used the word "condom" instead of
"Kabbadi" in real life. This acted as a lead-in to a debate asking
consumers for their opinion about saying the word in public.
Thirdly they created a ringtone using the word condom, downloadable
through SMS from campaign site www.condomcondom.org.
The campaign reached 139 million adult men nationally versus the
targeted 48 million. 400,000 people participated in the contest
riddle; 475,000 people asked for the condom ringtone download
through the SMS short code, 200,000 downloaded the ringtone from
the website. The website received over 3.5 million hits over the
campaign period. As per NACO, (National Aid Control Organisation of
India), condom sales through government channels grew by 5.0
million units in the last six months.