Bay Area Reporter - July 19, 2007
Matthew S. Bajko, m.bajko@ebar.com

The HIV Prevention Planning Council, which oversees the city's policies regarding HIV prevention methods, including social marketing campaigns, held its first public discussion on the issue at its July 12 meeting. Consensus appears to be building among members of the HIV policy body to not only require more vetting of the social marketing messages but to boost funding to conduct such testing.

"The field testing is important. I don't think we spend enough money on it," said interim HIV prevention director Tracey Packer.

"We need to support the primary steps to make the social marketing better. People are more likely to fund the latter than the pre-testing," said HPPC member Dr. Colin Partridge, who works at San Francisco General Hospital's pediatrics department.

HPPC member Frank Strona, who works in the health department's STD section, suggested the council could specify a certain portion of a campaign's budget be spent on focus groups.

"We can earmark a specific amount of funds to look at preplanning and evaluation," said Strona. "Focus group services are expensive. They are not cheap."

Local blogger Michael Petrelis had urged the council last year to take up the subject, due to what he considered to be inflammatory and offensive marketing campaigns aimed at gay men paid for with city funds. In discussing Petrelis's request in late 2006, council members expressed their own concerns with some of the messages funded by the city and agreed to agendize the topic at a 2007 meeting.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty has also voiced concerns about the types of messages being paid for by the health department. Asked about the HPPC's discussion last week, Dufty said he supports requiring increased market testing of HIV ads.

"I support more pre-planning," said Dufty. "I have been critical of prior campaigns. I've just been concerned there has been only one vendor so I have not been sure we've had campaigns that really stop people and make them think."

The HPPC had been expected to address the matter in February or March, and Petrelis, who was not present for last week's discussion, had criticized the council for the delay. In introducing the topic last week Gayle Burns, the council's community co-chair, acknowledged the discussion was a long time coming.

"It's been a hot topic for six to seven months. It's finally arrived," said Burns.

The HPPC helps write the health department's HIV prevention plan, in which is a section dedicated to strategies and interventions. The chapter includes a framework for designing and implementing interventions, with a section specifically devoted to social marketing campaigns.

The guidelines, according to health officials, are meant to ensure that the prevention strategies are based on behavioral and social science, and have been adequately tested with the audiences the marketing messages are intended to target.

But the plan itself does not go into much detail on how to conduct the pre-testing. Nor does it include criteria on how to judge if a campaign is so controversial it should be scrapped.

The HPPC is currently updating the city's 2004 HIV prevention plan and expects to complete the process by the end of 2008. Packer said the council would be updating the social marketing section of the plan sometime next year.

"Next year we will touch on changes to the plan so we are getting a jump start," she told the council.

Bhupendra Sheoran, the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center's national HIV program manager, presented the council last week with an overview of what comprises a social marketing campaign. Sheoran oversees the center's national Banyan Tree Project campaign aimed at reducing AIDS stigma in API communities.

"The key thing is consumer research," said Sheoran. "It is extremely important to pretest the message to measure cultural appropriateness and that the message is effective at relaying what you want to say."

Sometimes being purposefully provocative may not be the most effective route to take, advised Sheoran.

"Does it offend anyone? You have to take that into account," he said. "In the marketing world sometimes controversy is really good. It creates buzz and gets people talking about the campaign. But you don't want to proactively create controversy."

Creating a controversy-free campaign is easier said than done, said council member Tom Kennedy, who designs social marketing campaigns. He pointed to a crystal methamphetamine harm reduction campaign sponsored by http://www.Tweaker.org that used a mascot some gay men felt was inappropriate.

"It is unlikely that you could come up with a campaign that won't receive some criticism. It is a tricky balance," said Kennedy. "With Tweaker.org some people were saying we were glamorizing speed because the icon was too sexy."

One 2005 campaign in particular, known as the "Homoboy" campaign, continues to generate complaints long after it was retired. The ads targeted young men of color and featured them wearing outlandish jewelry called bling with taglines such as "Don't be a bitch - wear a condom."

When the ads first appeared around the city's gay neighborhoods and online, they generated complaints from some within the African American community, who faulted the concept as being based on stereotypes of people of color. Health officials countered that the campaign was meant to be provocative, and the ad's creators said they showed the concept to young men of color who largely approved of the ads.

Packer said she heard complaints about the campaign from both women upset at the use of the misogynistic words and older African American men upset at the hip-hop imagery of the ads.

"The campaign was developed for young African American men who might not identify with the word gay but have sex with men. It field-tested well," said Packer. "I said to people who were offended by the campaign that it was developed with the target population and they said it was effective. It wasn't meant for the people it offended, so how do you balance that?"

Nonetheless, during last week's discussion council member Chadwick Campbell, a young black man who is HIV-positive, referenced the Homoboy ads as an example of the kinds of social marketing campaigns he would like to see avoided in the future.

"The Homoboy campaign infuriates me. I find it incredibly offensive," said Campbell, with the HIV research section's Project Embrace program. "I don't think black men need any more negative stereotypes portrayed of us. No more bling. No more bitch. I don't think we need any more of that perpetrated on us in our community."

Sheoran advised that any pre-testing needs to include a large cross section of the community, not just the intended audience.

"The larger number of people you are pre-testing with the better the research will be," he said. "The more people involved in the production the better the message will be."

HPPC member Ken Pearce questioned how to be inclusive in the pre-planning process but also not discourage the use of campaigns that may seem stigmatizing to some people but the best approach to others.

"How do you balance out the criticisms over the larger issue of effectiveness? I think that is what a lot of us are grappling with," said Pearce.

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