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A response
1) Describing a safe sex campaign as a commercial product to sell condoms is an incorrect assumption. A commercial company (ansell) would need to be the provider, rather than the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities, which is partly funded by Queensland Health. Do you oppose the use of the 5 and 2 health message because it's shilling for Woolworths and Coles? Do you regard the government's 30 minutes of exercise as a commercial venture to sell more Nike shoes? I am intrigued to see how a health message became a commercial message for you.

2) The use of public transport bus shelters, railway advertising and billboard advertising is a common technique in the health promotion sector. Previously, adverts for campaigns to lower injecting drug use, ice use, cocaine, and speed. All of these are adult centric products with limited appeal to children, and as such, are placed in areas frequented by adults. You may also wish to review the advertising for Call of Duty 3, The Hangover II, and Lynx "Even Angels Fall". Attempting to proscribe bus shelter and billboard advertising as a G rated product venue is not consistent with current commercial and community accepted practice. Several heterosexual centric commercial advertising campaigns occupy these spaces. So do adverts for cars (18+), alcohol (18+) and a range of other non-child related products (home loans, credit cards, banks, real estate agencies). This is not an exclusive children's communication channel, and should not be presented as if it were such.

3) You may wish to review the Queensland Government's STI campaign site - sti.health.gov.au with particular reference to the campaign tracking data on bus shelter placements. For a heterosexual centric campaign of safe sex and condom use, the tracking data reports "The print/posters, in particular the ‘Without Even Knowing’ approach tended to have the highest impact, with recognition of the radio and internet banners at a lower level overall". (Wave 3 33%, Wave 2 25%, Wave 1 27%). Positive tracking data from the heterosexual condom use campaign would have partly informed the media buy for this campaign.

4) From a technical perspective, the value of the public transport location advertising is the anonymity of the consumption of the message. Given there remains an issue in contemporary society with identification, self-identification or potential identification as a homosexual male, the locations in the campaign allow for anonymous message consumption - something which is beneficial in all sexual health messages. Being able to see the message without having to acknowledge it was for you is a mechanism that allows for communication of potentially socially awkward or embarrassing messages. Again, a common heterosexual sexual health technique ported across to this health department sponsored health campaign.

5)If we had reasonable levels of equality between attitudes towards heterosexual and non-heterosexual sexual activity, this campaign would have run with about as much interest in it from people outside of the target market as you'd have found for the same people who weren't being targeted by the QLD teenage STI campaign. It would simply have run the course, nobody who wasn't in a same-sex male-to-male relationship or casual sexual encounter would have paid attention, and it would have joined the background clutter of the rest of the adverts in billboards, bus shelters and public transport.

6) There is also a normative component to the campaign which is the presentation of a same-sex male couple in an overt and visible manner. If this is problematic for people, then this is an area worthy of future campaigns for the normalisation of relationships that are present and part of the rich diverse culture of Australian life. I would be very keen to see more advertising in this area, not less, because there is clearly a market demand for increased levels of exposure to the apparently previously unknown concept of a safe sex message for someone who is not me (eg heterosexual). Support for and protection of minority sections of the population is a sign of decently functioning democracy that can cope with "About Me (for me)/Not about me (not for me)" dichotomies of lifestyle, religious preference, sexual practice, gender presentation, physical appearances, temporary-able states and other aspects of the differences between fellow humans. Count me in favour of the civilised discourse of messages for more than just the dominant normative social group.

Would you still have issues with this if it were a man and a woman?

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