The Health Education Board for Scotland is taking its HIV awareness
message across Europe as part of a collaboration with Levi’s and its
agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
HEBS is currently running a reworking of Levi’s award-winning
‘drugstore’ commercial - which tells the story of a young couple in a
1920s town buying condoms from a local chemist - in 150 cinemas
throughout Scotland as a warning against the dangers of unprotected sex.
The ad, aimed at 15-to 25- year-olds, features a revised endline:
‘Condoms, what to wear when you’re not wearing jeans.’
The line was devised by Alliance the Bridge for HEBS.
Shot in black and white, ‘drugstore’ features two executions. In one, it
is the boy who buys the condoms, only to meet the chemist again when he
calls at his house to pick up his daughter. In the other, the roles are
reversed and it is the girl who buys the condoms.
Martin Raymond, the director of public affairs for HEBS, explained: ‘We
took various edited versions of the originals to pre-testing.
We tried making more changes, such as having the chemist look pleased
that the couple would be using contraception, but that didn’t seem to
work well - kids don’t really want approval - so in the end we just
changed the endframe.’
Levi’s has now pledged to show the ads on the video walls in 600 of its
stores throughout Europe and as far away as the Philippines as part of
its commitment to World Aids Day on 1 December.
