French NGO AIDES has launched a print advertising campaign featuring naked couples, promoting the good news that an HIV-positive person following treatment no longer transmits the virus. Anti-retroviral drugs are now so efficient that they make the virus undetectable in the bloodstream and sexual fluids of affected people. Hence, HIV-positive people no longer transmit HIV, even when having unprotected sex. Four black and white photographs deliver a simple message to the general public. HIV-positive people have a lot to pass on. But not HIV. Each print shows a couple making love while practicing a sports or artistic activity: parachuting, scuba-diving, dancing and playing piano. One of them (man or woman) is HIV-positive and passes on his or her knowledge, talent to his or her partner. With this campaign, AIDES shows another image of HIV-positive people : that of gifted people, in love, and who hope to show the world that they are not just their HIV-status.

AIDES, the French HIV awareness organization, is promoting safe sex in a widespread advertising campaign associated with Euro 2016 soccer tournament. Online, social network, display and press ads depict naked fans painted in the colors of the different countries’ flags: Romania and Portugal, Germany and Sweden, Belgium and Iceland, England and Russia. Colours blend to suggest intimate intercourse between each couple. The tagline: “Faites l’amour, pas la guerre” (Make love not war) is connected to the encouragement: “Mélangez vous, protégez vous” (Blend together, safe together). The AIDES Colors of Love campaign is designed to celebrate the universal value of love and diversity of sexualities, tackling the aggressive and xenophobic behaviour seen in previous tournaments. A more serious message recalls the importance of preventing HIV in a European context where the epidemic remains active. 142,000 new cases were diagnosed in 2014, and 30% of HIV-positive people are still unaware of being infected. The AIDS epidemic is growing even more alarmingly in Eastern Europe and Russia, to an unprecedented pace since the early 1980s. Faced with the temptation of trivialization of the disease, the campaign invites everyone to continue taking care of oneself and others.

Bergedorfer Bier in Germany has attracted attention with the Silver Cannes Lion for Print awarded in June for “Brewed with Love”, an homage to Annie Leibovitz’s 1991 Vanity Fair cover of pregnant Demi Moore. The print and outdoor advertising campaign features three topless men, Jannis, Renke and Dima, cradling their beer bellies as if pregnant.

Equinox advertising campaign, “Commit to Something”, won a Graphite Pencil for Outdoor Advertising/Poster Advertising Campaigns in the 2016 D&AD Awards. With the rise of convenience culture, it’s too easy to avoid commitment. Everything is forgotten by the next tweet, Uber driver you call, or job you grab in six-month’s time. Equinox wanted to rise above this rather lazy approach toward living. As a gym, they know commitment is everything. To encourage people’s commitment in provocative, interesting ways, they went beyond the usual gym/working out photography and instead focussed on commitments in life. The result was a campaign (Print, Out-of-home, Digital, Social, In Club) that created conversation, divided opinion, and made international news.

Calvin Klein’s latest “In My Calvins” advertising campaign, promoting the Spring 2016 range, is raising eyebrows over its erotic nature. The risqué Erotica In My Calvins campaign, shot by photographer Harley Weir, features American fashion model and television personality Kendall Jenner, Danish actress Klara Kristin, Australian actress Abbey Lee Kershaw and Dutch artist and model Saskia de Brauw. Jenner’s controversial ad has her suggestively holding a cut citrus fruit, with the words, “I Eat In #MyCalvins.” Kristin’s ads include an up-skirt shot of her wearing a short dress. Kershaw’s work shows her posing with her hand strategically placed in her underwear. An unnamed model is shown with the phrase “I belfry in my Calvins”, with the corresponding rear selfie and jeans zip. Is this a celebration of sexuality or a case of sexual objectification?