The campaign film, with a very familiar New Zealand sporting register.
Most people carrying the virus are fine. What is not fine is the shame, and shame is not fixed by information, because everybody already has the information and is still not saying the word out loud.
Make it a national competition. New Zealand should be the best place in the world to have herpes, and here is the leaderboard.
The Stupid/Smart of it
Stupid: Tell an entire country to be proud of its herpes. Put a beloved 78-year-old rugby coach on camera to say the word repeatedly, in the register of a World Cup team talk. Build a global leaderboard for a sexually transmitted infection and invite the nation to climb it.
Smart: The joke is doing structural work. Humour is what gets a taboo said out loud in a group, and being said out loud in a group is the actual treatment for stigma. The competitive frame moves the ask from “feel differently” to “do a thing”.
The steal: when the barrier is embarrassment, do not argue with it, outrank it. Find a motivation your audience already holds more strongly than their discomfort, and hang the ask off that.
New Zealanders did not stop being awkward about herpes. They just wanted to win more. It took the Grand Prix for Good at Cannes in 2025.
A national coaching voice used on the least sporting subject imaginable, played completely straight.
Act-poweredThe index is live and the country really climbed it. Has to be seen to work.
The devices behind this one, from our library of ways in: