loveLife’s outdoor media takes a fresh new direction for 2004

loveLife CEO, Dr. David Harrison said: "loveLife and what it stands for is now known by more than 80% of young South Africans. It's the right time to refresh and reposition our outdoor campaign to avoid it becoming wallpaper."

"The main purpose of the billboard campaign is to sustain engagement with loveLife and to stimulate discussion", Dr. Harrison adds. "For that reason our creative must constantly push HIV communication into uncharted territory."

The new "love to be there..." creative deals with the top priorities expressed by young South Africans, namely to get good education and a job, to stay free of HIV and achieve a stable and happy family life. Dr. Harrison says that this future-focused approach to HIV prevention is based on both national and international research and loveLife's own experience of the impact of its motivational programme on teenagers across the country. "There is now growing recognition that more effort should be directed at helping young people perceive and achieve the benefits of an HIV-free future, instead of only pointing out the risks and negative consequences of irresponsible behaviour. For young people ill-equipped or unable to negotiate their future, pessimism and low self-esteem puts them at greater risk for HIV".

The creative treatment juxtaposes a childlike drawing of an idealized situation with a real-life image of an individual "living the dream."

The billboard most likely to raise eyebrows combines a photograph of a child looking up at her pregnant thirty-something mother with a child's drawing depicting happy family life. "Young people have heard the message of abstinence – and many have responded positively", Harrison says. "But we also have to deal frankly with the fact that most fifteen year olds do want to get pregnant one day, and their first sexual relationship may not last forever. The normal experience of growing up must not mean that today's teenagers contract HIV."

In another innovation for 2004, loveLife will use a single "foundation creative" for the year— instead of three or four creatives of previous years— as the backdrop for a series of shorter "blitz campaigns" driven through outdoor, radio, TV and loveLife print platforms.

loveLife is also repositioning its outdoor media by giving greater preference to smaller format billboards. "Our thinking" Dr. Harrison says, "is that loveLife does not need to try and sustain the big bang of spectaculars for too long anymore. We'd like to maintain more frequent and intimate communication with our target group. The smaller format billboards we think will help accomplish that."