Danny Barry was in a group of eight students at University of Miami's PhilADthropy project. They had 25 hours to come up with and implement an ad campaign for their client, Miami-Dade's top HIV/AIDS resource center Care Resource.
“We found all these articles about how, in the next few years, scientists were hoping to have a cure for AIDS,” the junior advertising major said. “People in our age-range like results that are immediate. Here's a chance to present a clear end to HIV/AIDS. So we flipped the common “AIDS Kills' to “Kill AIDS.'”
And so it went. The group focused on the under-25-year-old demographic, from which 50 percent of all new HIV infections are reported.
“Maybe Danny's generation, this could be their moment. So we thought, “Let's go out there and kill AIDS,'” said Serge Castagno, a part-time UM professor who acted as a mentor to Barry's group. “Let's just go after it, close the deal and call it a day.”
After meeting with Care Resource and coming up with a strategy, the group was ready to execute, its last obligation in the day-long project.
So they thought of what would represent their idea. Shock and drive were the two main focuses of Kill AIDS, Barry explained.
“Some of these are a sort of a punch in the gut,” he said. Print ads, for example, are dark. There's no image, just text, like: “End the fight, start the kill.' “It's not the type of thing you'll expect to see while walking down the street. The words are big and bold, they're not hidden. They make you think.”
And Care Resource seemed very pleased with the results, Castagna said.
“This was the first time I saw a client whose jaw dropped,” he said. They were extremely wowed. From the strategic idea of the campaign “ you just can't have creative work without backing it up “ to the execution, they backed up everything they wanted to say. There were no holes in this campaign.”
The Kill AIDS campaign kicked off in April's Miami AIDS Walk, and has become Care Resource's premiere ad campaign. Barry said he's happy to see it grow into this magnitude and hopes it makes a change for an otherwise apathetic age group that is not concerned with HIV/AIDS until they've been diagnosed.
Editor’s Note: Gideon Grudo is a reporter with the South Florida Gay News and this article is used with permission.
