UN agency launches first-ever ad campaign highlighting children with HIV/AIDS

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched the first-ever outdoor ad campaign in conjunction with a major media company to raise awareness and funds to fight the impact of HIV/AIDS on children, they said today.

The global outdoor advertising campaign will focus attention on the hundreds of millions of children who are orphaned or left vulnerable because of HIV/AIDS every year, while also raising the funds to help them, and is a joint effort of the UNICEF and Clear Channel Outdoor, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications.

"Children are disproportionately impacted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic," Executive Director of UNICEF, Ann Veneman said at the campaign's launch in New York. "They are watching their hopes and dreams crumble, as parents, teachers, caregivers and role models succumb to AIDS," she added.

Fifteen million children have already lost parents to the disease, yet only 10 per cent get public support or aid. Each year, some 600,000 children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV/AIDS, and of those, 500,000 will die as a result. Yet only 5 per cent of HIV-positive children have access to treatment, and only 10 per cent of pregnant women have access to services that can prevent transmission to their children, said UNICEF.

"Outdoor displays are extraordinarily effective at grabbing people's attention," Global President of Clear Channel Outdoor, Paul Meyer said at the opening where he was joined by UN Goodwill Ambassadors Whoopi Goldberg and Sir Roger Moore, and HIV-positive Muppet from Takalani Sesame, Kami, who unveiled the creative. Kami appears regularly on the South African version of Sesame Street.

The campaign was launched simultaneously in London by UNICEF U.K. President, Lord Puttnam and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Lord Richard Attenborough, and in Johannesburg with South African artist, Yvonne Chaka Chaka.

The campaign will consist of poster ads in 50 countries, and represents the first plank in the agency's global campaign, "Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS," which they announced Tuesday, 25 October. The creative will appear in November and was provided by Bester Burke, an agency in Cape Town, South Africa, who won the account after competing with 300 other entries from around the world.