Latest news with #HerpesFoundation
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
New Zealand ad campaign to make country ‘best place in the world to have herpes' wins top prize at Cannes Lions
A public health advertisement that campaigned to make New Zealand 'the best place in the world to have herpes' has won a top prize at the Cannes Lions – one of world's most prestigious advertising awards. The campaign, launched by the New Zealand Herpes Foundation in October last year, attempts to challenge decades of entrenched stigma around genital herpes – a condition that affects up to 80% of New Zealanders at some point in their lives, the foundation said. The cheeky take on a retro-style tourism video features former All Blacks coach Sir Graham Henry lamenting the loss of New Zealand's clout on the international stage – the sheep to human ratio is 'embarrassingly low', pies are 'pushing seven bucks' and the country's pride is 'less than outstanding', he opines. 'We need something new to be proud of, something big and brave to put us back on the map – it's time for New Zealand to become the best place in the world to have herpes,' Henry says. The promotional video is followed by a 'Herpes Destigmatisation Course', 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. The campaign – developed alongside Auckland-based agency Motion Sickness and Sydney agency FINCH – was awarded the Lions health and UN foundation grand prix for good, for 'unabashedly [using] humour to tackle a challenging subject and stigmatisation'. 'Our 2025 awardee took a taboo topic and turned it on its head – showing that with a great strategy, a big, bold crazy idea, and humour for days, that anything is possible,' said David Ohana, Cannes Lions jury president. Claire Hurst, one of the foundation's founding trustees, told the Guardian herpes is mostly medically insignificant but that 'a lifetime of societal conditioning' around the word 'herpes' makes coping with a diagnosis difficult for many. Never in her 30 years of doing this work has a campaign to destigmatise the infection had such cut-through, Hurst said. 'As soon as you just put it out there, and people can just say 'you see, it's cold sores' and 'yeah, a lot of us have them and most of us don't know', then it stops being the big bogey man.'
RNZ News
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Sir Graham Henry, herpes, and an award-winning ad campaign
Sir Graham Henry. Photo: Supplied When Sir Graham Henry got a call from a young ad man asking him to front a campaign about a taboo subject, his answer was surprising. "It was quite daunting to call him up," says Sam Stuchbury, creative director and founder of Motion Sickness. "No one really wants to be in a herpes ad." Sam Stuchbury, executive creative director of Motion Sickness Photo: Supplied But Sir Graham said 'yes' to the campaign, and last week took his support of the campaign further by beaming into the prestigious Cannes Lions global ad awards with a tongue in cheek message of congratulations to New Zealand for being "the best place in the world to have herpes". The campaign was awarded two Grand Prix and four other prizes at Cannes, where they competed with more than 26,000 entries. Stuchbury tells The Detail how he nervously phoned Sir Graham, and before he could complete his pitch the former All Black coach said, "yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do it". With Sir Graham on board, the team at Motion Sickness then approached other New Zealand "icons" including Sir Ashley Bloomfield, Sir Buck Shelford and comedian Angella Dravid. The agency had been given a brief from the Herpes Foundation: to remove the stigma from genital herpes , an infection that one in three sexually active New Zealand adults have. Foundation trustee Alaina Luxmoore says the organisation had been trying to destigmatise herpes for more than 20 years. A still image from the award-winning herpes ad. Photo: Supplied "It has never, ever, ever worked," she says. "You're up against mainstream media; being the punchline joke in movies and songs and TV; decades and decades and decades of internalised shame about herpes as being akin to some type of sexual proclivity or uncleanliness. "It felt like you could never shake the stigma." When the agency came back to Luxmoore with the campaign tagline "Make New Zealand the best place in the world to have herpes", her reaction was instant. "'Oh my gosh, that's it.' By the end of the weekend after we'd heard that line for the first time I couldn't shake it and we were giddy with excitement." Both Luxmoore and Stuchbury were shocked at the worldwide reaction, with 22 million PR impressions, a reflection of the number of people reached by the campaign in the first eight weeks, and more than 10,000 hours of educational content watched. "I didn't expect the level of admiration from overseas people and we had a lot of herpes organisations from other places around the world reaching out and saying, can I share your content, can you tell me about it. "American podcasts, English researchers who are doing their degrees on the stigma around herpes. Lots and lots of international eyes on us and I didn't expect that." For Luxmoore it was also a surprising personal experience, as she fronted for media interviews for the foundation about why destigmatisation was so important. "It was like, 'who is the person who can speak to the lived experience of herpes' and that's me. The reason I'm on the board is because I have herpes." Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
