Coming up with a catchy (for want of a better word) marketing campaign can be a real challenge for brands.
Australian condom company Hero probably thought it was onto a surefire winner with this latest strategy – imagining if sexually transmitted infections (STIs) were actual people, creating dating profiles for them, and then uploading them to Tinder.
Raising awareness of sexual health and encouraging responsibility is no bad thing – and Hero launched its campaign by calling its “STI matches” names like Chlaramydia, Herpez, Johnorrhoea and Stephyphilis.
The initiative seemed to initially make an impact – according to the company, the profiles received hundreds of matches, and while “some cottoned on early, thinking it was a really clever idea…others invited Chlaramydia out to dinner.”
However, two STI profiles in particular seems to have backfired badly on the company. Entitled “Aydes” and “Aidy”, the profiles – since deleted from the company’s site – were pounced on by HIV and safe sex campaigners for making fun of people living with HIV or Aids.
What’s more, the symptoms listed for “Aydes” – including a reference to “an inevitable, premature death” – have been slammed as misinformed and inaccurate.
Some have called the entire campaign “harmful and stigmatising”, arguing that “the outdated notion that only slutty people contract STIs is precisely the thing preventing us from combatting them properly.”
.@Tinder Are you aware of the harmful & stigmatising campaign taking place within your app? https://t.co/OFeS0TzXlR
— Nic Dorward (@nicheholas) April 5, 2016
@nicheholas @HEROcondoms NOT the way to go about things
— 👼🏼 (@troyesivan) April 5, 2016
For its part, Hero Condoms has since stated that its aim was to “get people talking and thinking about safe sex”, while there has been no word yet from Tinder as to whether or not Hero violated the dating app’s terms and conditions with the STI campaign.
