The text to this ad reads: “It’s easy to lose your head when you’re horny.”

You can expect the rather conservative, but utterly unstable (in a fun way) Germans to produce an ad campaign like this. The ad doesn’t beat around the bush much and the message is pretty clear. This should make an impact in our opinion…

Being from South Africa, where HIV/AIDS is a massive, massive problem, I’m probably in a good position to give my 2 cents about this ad. We’ve heard a lot from researchers in the country about how to inform the masses about HIV and how not to. And a lot of the advertising and marketing for the AIDS campaign have been successfull. The big campaign these days is called “The ABC”, which stands for Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condomize. The campaign was first used in Uganda and was very effective, cutting down new AIDS victims by almost 75%, but to date the ABC campaign has not really produced the results in SA.

So obviously advertisers consider their target market first, when designing a new ad campaign (that’s basic Marketing 101), but in South Africa this is proving to be extremely difficult, since we have so many different and diverse cultures. So again obviously, this German ad is speaking to certain characteristic in German people and just wonder how effective the ad is…

On first view, it’s quite shocking, whilst the copy makes it quite funny. “So does it get the message across?” he ponders to himself in the quiet of his room.