\n<\/p>\n
A public health advertisement that campaigned to make New Zealand \u201cthe best place in the world to have herpes\u201d has won a top prize at the Cannes Lions \u2013 one of world\u2019s most prestigious advertising awards.<\/p>\n
The campaign, launched by the New Zealand Herpes Foundation in October last year, attempts to challenge decades of entrenched stigma around genital herpes \u2013 a condition that affects up to 80% of New Zealanders at some point in their lives, the foundation said.<\/p>\n
The cheeky take on a retro-style tourism video features former All Blacks coach Sir Graham Henry lamenting the loss of New Zealand\u2019s clout on the international stage \u2013 the sheep to human ratio is \u201cembarrassingly low\u201d, pies are \u201cpushing seven bucks\u201d and the country\u2019s pride is \u201cless than outstanding\u201d, he opines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need something new to be proud of, something big and brave to put us back on the map \u2013 it\u2019s time for New Zealand to become the best place in the world to have herpes,\u201d Henry says.<\/p>\n
The promotional video is followed by a \u201cHerpes Destigmatisation Course\u201d, fronted by prominent New Zealanders such as former director-general of health Sir Ashley Bloomfield, former All Black Sir Buck Shelford and boxer Mea Motu.<\/p>\n
The campaign \u2013 developed alongside Auckland-based agency Motion Sickness and Sydney agency FINCH \u2013 was awarded the Lions health and UN foundation grand prix for good, for \u201cunabashedly [using] humour to tackle a challenging subject and stigmatisation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur 2025 awardee took a taboo topic and turned it on its head \u2013 showing that with a great strategy, a big, bold crazy idea, and humour for days, that anything is possible,\u201d said David Ohana, Cannes Lions jury president.<\/p>\n
Claire Hurst, one of the foundation\u2019s founding trustees, told the Guardian herpes is mostly medically insignificant but that \u201ca lifetime of societal conditioning\u201d around the word \u201cherpes\u201d makes coping with a diagnosis difficult for many. <\/p>\n
Never in her 30 years of doing this work has a campaign to destigmatise the infection had such cut-through, Hurst said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as you just put it out there, and people can just say \u2018you see, it\u2019s cold sores\u2019 and \u2018yeah, a lot of us have them and most of us don\u2019t know\u2019, then it stops being the big bogey man.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A public health advertisement that campaigned to make New Zealand \u201cthe best place in the world to have herpes\u201d has won a top prize at the Cannes Lions \u2013 one of world\u2019s most prestigious advertising awards. The campaign, launched by the New Zealand Herpes Foundation in October last year, attempts to challenge decades of entrenched<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1972,1976,1973,1974,1977,798,1169,1168,1975,550,1971],"class_list":{"0":"post-9586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-campaign","9":"tag-cannes","10":"tag-country","11":"tag-herpes","12":"tag-lions","13":"tag-place","14":"tag-prize","15":"tag-top","16":"tag-wins","17":"tag-world","18":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}