The following is an article from the Wall Street Journal dated Friday, July 27^th, 2001:

 “In New Global Campaign, Durex Maker Uses Humor to Sell Condoms”

“London – Is the condom industry ready for a little comic relief?. SSL International PLC, the world’s no.1 condom maker, has launched a new global marketing push that uses humor – often slapstick humor – to promote its Durex brand. Television and print ads starring men dressed in white sperm costumes have started to appear in Britain and elsewhere in Europe and are expected to be launched in parts of Asia as well.

In the U.S. – where condom makers face stricter guidelines for TV advertising – a print campaign scheduled to begin in September depicts a trophy topped with gold figurines of a man and woman entwined. The tagline reads, ‘ Have the sex you tell your friends you have.’

The Durex ads mark quite a reversal from the safe sex theme that was a staple of condom advertising in the 1980s and early 1990s after the outbreak of AIDS. They’re also a departure from the steamy print ads launched for Durex in 1998 in the U.S. market where the brand trails Carter-Wallace Inc.’s Trojans. Those sepia-colored ads featured naked couples embracing.

‘We’ve moved away from the preaching campaigns that create anxiety. And we’ve also moved away from the sexual ads because they are not effective anymore,’ says Leigh Taylor, SSL’s global category director for Durex. He says young people are so bombarded with sexual imagery in ads that they no longer notice it.

The new TV ads, created by the Manchester, England, office of ad agency McCann-Erickson and airing on MTV across Europe, are designed to appeal to 16- to 24-year-olds in Europe and Asia. In one, a young man is walking down the street toward his date. Behind him, a boisterous sperm-costumed crowd (Think Woody Allen in ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about Sex’) advances while the woman looks on perplexed. The couple meet, but before the sperm can reach them a huge latex wall appears. Soon enough  the sperm are all trapped, squirming, in a huge condom in the middle of the street. The ad’s tagline: ‘Durex: For a Hundred Million Reasons.’

Targeting youths makes sense, because they are becoming sexually active earlier and using condoms more often. In a survey of 28 countries commissioned by Durex, 16- to 20-year-olds say they lost their virginity at 16, on average, while 25- to 34-year-olds say they were 18 when they first had sex. For the over 45 crowd, the average age was 18.9. The report also found that 61% of youths between the ages of 16 and 21 use condoms.

In the U.S., 58% of ninth and tenth graders reported that either they or there partner used a condom the last time they had intercourse in 1999, up from 46% in 1991, according to a fact sheet distributed by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation as a part of a report on condom advertising on U.S. television. But Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, AOL Time Warner Inc.’s WB Television Network and Viacom Inc.’s UPN don’t permit condom advertising. And while News Corp.’s Fox, General Electric Co.’s NBC, and Viacom Inc.’s CBS do allow condom ads, the commercials are generally restricted to late at night. NBC, for instance, only allows condom ads after 11 p.m. and asks that they not be ‘overly erotic.’ CBS usually keeps them off until at least 9 p.m.

As a result, condom advertising is more likely to run on radio. The new U.S. radio ads by Durex – which has 15% of the U.S, market – feature playful interviews with couples about their sexual experiences. (‘We were on vacation and I lifted my skirt,’ a female voice says, giggling. A male responds: ‘Yeah, I think she was in her exhibitionist phase then.’) These ads were also created by McCann-Erickson, which is a unit of U.S.-based Interpublic Group of Cos.