Never before has anyone transformed a magazine into a cause of a stigma before. To coincide with Life Ball in Vienna April 2015 we took the blood HIV+ people and mixed it with the printing presses of Vangardist. Subsequently every line, word and picture carried the virus. To enhance the moral dilemma of physically taking the issue in ones hands, we wrapped the publication in a resealable wrapper and encouraged people to break the seal and break the stigma. This is innovative in terms of message, production approach and legal clearances across markets ranging from the EU to the strict US laws.
Despite 30 years of campaigning, between 2004 and 2013 there was an 80% increase in the number of new HIV infections. For this reason, to coincide with the Life Ball in Vienna, Vangardist decided to dedicated their whole edition to the topic.
We transformed the media into the cause of the stigma itself by printing every word, line and picture of the 3000 special edition print run with a combination of HIV+ blood and ink.
60 millilitres of HIV+ blood was donated by 3 Austrian nationals who consented to be part of our campaign.
The blood was collected by a registered doctor in Vienna under controlled sterile conditions.
The blood was then sterlizedsterilized by staff at Innsbruck University’s Medical faculty, using an autoclave.
Once sterilized the blood was then tested by the staff to confirm that contact with the blood posed no risk of contamination or infection.
Having been transported back to the VANGARDIST printer in Vienna by a bonded registered medical courier service the sterilized blood was then mixed with the ink to be used to print the magazine’s cover.
Every step of the processes outlined above were documented by independent witnesses and were in line with guidelines developed by HavardHarvard University’s centre for infectious diseases.
By further putting the issue into a sealed wrapper, people picking up the magazine were confronted with an additional dilemma- break the seal and break the stigma or ignore the issue.
The HIV+ Issue has one simple goal: to combat the global stigma surrounding HIV+ by forcing people to confront pre-conceptions surrounding the virus and creating a campaign strong enough to drive mainstream editorial discussion outside of the traditional news cycle.
Outcome :
• One of the most trending topics on the net
• Received broad coverage on platforms like buzzfeed, mashable,iflscience.com
• Over 5,2m shares in the first ten days of the campaign
• More than 20mins of live coverage on news channels such as CBS-News, BBC, AlJazeera, etc
• Reaching out to an estimated audience of 54million
• Over 300 publications covered the topic in 28 countries across the globe.
• All coverage added up to an earned media value of USD 2,9m
• On the day of entry, the edition was on its way to selling out, raising potentially EUR 150K of donations.