Publicis Groupe Égalité – Prep4Love Chicago

Égalité, the LGBT Business Resource Group for Publicis Groupe marketing communications and media agencies, developed the Prep4Love Chicago campaign on behalf of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC), an organization that mobilizes communities to create equity and justice for people living with and vulnerable to HIV and related chronic diseases.

The goal was to increase awareness of and access to PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) among focus populations within Chicago’s LGBT community. PrEP is an HIV prevention program which helps people to take charge of their sexual health and overall well-being. On a PrEP regimen people take a daily pill, get regular STD testing and meet regularly with a health professional.

The campaign used highly visceral black and white photography that captured feelings of love and sensuality in a sex-positive way. The campaign team sought provocative and eye-catching photography that would stop people in their tracks and force them to pay attention to the message—especially on public transportation, where the ad competed with many other promotional visuals.

The team deliberately cast real couples and respected leaders within Chicago’s LGBT community whose relationships were empowered through the use of PrEP. The photography was strategically placed in highly visible areas on Chicago Transit Authority trains, platforms and buses that serve the areas with the most vulnerable populations. All transit placements, print ads, banners and social media drove people to PrEP4Love.com and the PrEP phone line.

In its first seven weeks, Prep4Love.com saw 16,104 users in 17,738 different sessions. 86% of these users accessed the site through direct traffic—they typed in www.prep4love.com, which they saw in campaign materials. There was also an average of over 90,000 social media impressions (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) per week.

Reports from clinics indicate they have seen an increase in traffic of people seeking PrEP since the campaign launch. The PrEP phone line had callers who had no knowledge of PrEP but were very eager to learn more and start the program, and others who had previously started the process of getting onto PrEP but had fallen out of care.