Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards - 2024

Campaign: Safe Is Sexy
Agency/Firm: The Studio NYC
Client: Boston Public Health Commission

Pride imagery is often bright and colorful, so when the Boston Public Health Commission hired production company Studio NYC to lead its sexually transmitted illness awareness campaign in June, it knew it didn’t want to replicate campaigns that relied on imagery or euphemisms that fail to get to the matter at heart. Nor did it want to get lost in Pride campaigns that lean into partying.

Instead, it leaned into its history of working with communities impacted by racism and systemic inequities to create a campaign focused on the realities of dating and sexual health with the end goal of increasing STI testing and awareness.

The Boston Public Health Commission accomplished this goal with an out-of-home campaign that embraced the Pride aesthetic while targeting enclaves both desensitized and stigmatized against STI testing, including LGBTQIA+, immigrant and BIPOC communities with sexually active people of all ages and backgrounds.

The sex-positive ads used dating and hookup app chats to demonstrate how realistic conversations about safe sex can still be sexy. They also included animation to represent a diverse range of people. The OOH work included live billboards and public transit ads to correspond with urban Pride events in multiple languages.

The organization said the campaign drove 72,000 visits to its STI testing microsite.