World AIDS Day 2009 - The Mass Murderer Campaign

In just one month in honor of World AIDS Day on December 1st, new commercials will be released. These new commercials which hope to promote safe sex will not be featuring the hottest celebrity nor will they be featuring any of our current powerful politicians urging the public to be safe and smart about sex. Instead, these latest commercials will feature none other than Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.

You may be wondering what the connection is between safe sex and murderous dictators. Well, the campaign’s tagline of “AIDS is a mass murderer” might put it all into perspective for you. Regenbogen e V. designed this awareness campaign with help from “das Comitee,” an advertising agency. The underlying theme of the campaign is that these three dictators have been responsible for the deaths of approximately the same number of people that have succumbed to AIDS. These pictures of the dictators are, thus, used to show that AIDS is also a killer of the masses in order to frighten people into using condoms correctly and consistently.

Naturally, a campaign of this nature is not without its critics. In fact, there have been several AIDS/HIV charities and foundations that have already come forward to state that they do not support this campaign. One spokeswoman for the National AIDS Trust states, “Of course there are many HIV organizations that run their own campaigns, however, I would think that (advertisement) is incredibly stigmatizing to people living with HIV who already face much stigma and discrimination due to ignorance about the virus. On top of this, it fails to provide any kind of actual prevention message. For example, use a condom, and may deter people to come forward for testing.”

In the last few years, there has been a great reduction in terms of the public’s interest in AIDS and HIV topics. However, the number of people who are succumbing to this disease each and every day has not slowed. In fact, over 28 million people across the globe have succumbed to AIDS, making this virus an unrivaled mass murderer. The campaign was invented and brought forward to ensure that people around the world do not forget that AIDS is still very much a killer that can target anybody. Because of this, the campaign wanted to use shock value (which it did quite well) in order to bring AIDS and HIV issues to the forefront of world news and people’s minds.

Funding for the commercial was provided by the German “das Comitee” on behalf of an AIDS Awareness committee within Germany. Photographs were shot by Uwe Düttmann. The film footage was directed by Ivo Weigert and produced by “Doppelgänger-Film.” All those who participated in creating this commercial campaign volunteered to do so in order to help make it ready for World AIDS Day 2009.