Sex Sells... Even in Charity

Aids campaigns began in the 1980 and advertised the harms of sex by promoting safe sex. It caused a lot of controvasy as Aids was seent o be dirty and a taboo subject. Now people were seeing condoms on images as a non subtle approach to the subject it got a lot of criticism but was a method of direct advertising. The image to the right was a mens cancer advert in the 80's published in Everyman magazine. iwth the small writing next to the females breast saying "No wonder male cancer is ignored...When this is all you ever think about" This was attention grabbing and made a lot of men stop and look closer to read what the ad had to say. Nothing more clever than selling sex at a very obvious level to make people look closer.

STI and AIDS campaigns moved forward in the 2000's as they became more intelligent and used sexual imagery with a graphic message. Top left- "use a condom its still your best defence" placeing a gun where a man genitalia is ment to be brings forth the danger of the desease and how it can kill you. Top right- You sleep with everyone your partner has slept with. Bringing awareness to the fact you can catch it from anyone you are sexually active with if you don't know there history. The image is very sexual yet you are distracted by the amount of hands covering the body making this image a attention grabbing a surreal. This surreal imagery I think works really well in a campaign like this ad it demands attention because it's out of the ordinary.

Adverts to shock

The middle images are from France as an anti smoking campaign using sexually suggestive imagery involving teenagers comparing smoking to being forced to perform oral sex with the tag "smoking is to be a slave to tabacco" This is a negative why of using sex by comparing it to an act of rape does not appeal and does not make you want to look at this image comfortably. This is the same shock tactics as the banardos campaigns. A german campaign against Aids used imagery of Hitler having sex with beautiful women with the tag line "AIDs is a mass murderer" this provoked a massive amount of negative feedback not because the images were very sexualised but because the victims of AIDS felt as if they were being compared to Hitler. Shock tactics do run the risk of offending people and when they use campaigns this controversial I feel they do it for the press rather than thinking of the effects it was have on the public. I don't think this is the right way to raise awareness and is ethically wrong.

 Using it the right way

I feel the breast cancer campaigns have it spot on with the advertising strategy. They use beautiful sexy women  to grab your attention then present you with the issue that is to do with breasts therefore making it fundamental to use sexual imagery as the campaign. The women they use are desirable and empowering they even use the epitome of a sex symbol (wonder woman) who is meant to be invincible to show that anyone can get breast cancer. This reminds me of the Anderson and Low exhibition "Campions"