The film is on the campaign's own channel. That is Sir Graham Henry, the coach who won New Zealand the 2011 Rugby World Cup, delivering a state-of-the-nation address about herpes.
Around 80% of New Zealanders carry herpes simplex, oral or genital. Medically it is, for most people, a nuisance. Socially it is a life event. Contagious reported that roughly 30% of people who get a genital herpes diagnosis go on to experience depression or suicidal ideation. The virus is mild. The shame is not.
Every health charity in the world knows this shape of problem and reaches for the same tool: an earnest campaign explaining that you should not feel bad. Which has never once stopped anybody feeling bad. Motion Sickness looked at the actual barrier and found it was not ignorance, it was embarrassment, and you cannot lecture embarrassment out of a country.
So they went looking for a feeling strong enough to override it. In New Zealand there is exactly one: the need to be the best in the world at something. Research put the country ninth out of ten OECD nations on herpes stigma. Ninth. For a nation that measures itself in world titles, that is not a health statistic, it is a table you are losing.
Stop asking New Zealanders to be kind about herpes. Ask them to beat every other country at it.
"Make New Zealand the best place in the world to have herpes" turns a wellness message into a national sporting objective, complete with a league table, a coach and a training program.
The rally cry is a mock nation-address film fronted by Sir Graham Henry, who runs through the things New Zealand is rightly proud of and then proposes a new one. Behind it sits the actual machinery, and this is the part most charity work never builds.
First, a free Herpes Destigmatisation Course: short, funny, genuinely educational modules fronted by people the country trusts, including Sir Ashley Bloomfield, the former Director-General of Health who became a household name during the pandemic, and world champion boxer Mea Motu. Second, a live global Herpes Stigma Index at thebestplaceintheworldtohaveherpes.com, ranking countries against each other on real survey data, so the goal has a scoreboard and the scoreboard moves when people take the course. Third, travel-poster outdoor in the visual language of tourism advertising, plus radio and a heavy social push. It launched on Global Herpes Awareness Day, 13 October 2024.
The 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 out loud, repeatedly, in the register of a Rugby World Cup team talk. Build a global leaderboard for a sexually transmitted infection and invite the nation to climb it. Every instinct in health communications says this is the pitch that gets you politely walked out of the building.
The smart: the joke is doing structural work. Humour is what gets a taboo subject 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", and the thing is a course that takes twenty minutes. The index gives the campaign a live metric that is also the media hook, so it can keep generating news for months off its own data. And the messengers are chosen with real precision: a health official for authority, an athlete for courage, a rugby coach for permission. Nothing here is random.
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 instead. New Zealanders did not stop being awkward about herpes. They just wanted to win more.
The other thing worth stealing is the scoreboard. Most purpose work ends at the film. This one built an instrument that turns audience behaviour into a public number, which means the campaign has a second act, a third act and a reason for journalists to write about it again in eight weeks. If you are pitching a cause idea and the only measurement is views, you have half an idea.
Also reported: over 5m social views, 740,566 unique New Zealanders reached, 69% of course participants showing reduced stigma attitudes and 81% saying they were motivated to support others with HSV. Straight talk on the headline number: the stigma index is the campaign's own instrument, built and run by the campaign, so "first in the world" is a claim on a scale the entrant designed. It is measured against real survey data and it moved, which is worth something, but it is not an independent league table. Interim coverage during the campaign had New Zealand at sixth before the final entry figure of first.
Plus Gold and Silver at Clio Health 2025 and a Bronze at The One Show in Health & Wellness.
Client: New Zealand Herpes Foundation, with Whānau Ora, Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa and the Sexually Transmitted Infections Education Foundation
Agency: Motion Sickness, Auckland
Executive creative director: Sam Stuchbury
Creative director: Melina Fiolitakis
Creatives: Will Macdonald, Freddy Riddiford
Head of strategy: Hilary Ngan Kee · Strategy: Chelsea Knowles
Head of production: Joseph McAlpine · General manager: Alex McManus
Production: FINCH · Director: Alex Roberts · DOP: Marty Williams
Editors: Luka Turjak, Julian Currin · Post: Atticus · Sound: Big Pop Studios
Web: ED (creative director Elliot Schultz) · Research: TRA
Talent: Sir Graham Henry, Sir Ashley Bloomfield, Mea Motu
Campaign Brief NZ, the Grand Prix for Good announcement and full credits
Contagious, campaign of the week
Scoop, NZHF release with results and awards
Famous Campaigns, the breakdown
Cannes Lions, 2025 final winners
The devices behind this one, from our library of ways in: