Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Miami Herald; Friday, November 22, 1991
Elinor Burkett; Herald Staff Writer
The marketing medium: MTV.
Early next year, Ramses Safe Play Condoms, the first condoms marketed directly to teens, may also become the first condoms to appear in commercials broadcast nationwide. In a strategy designed to make condoms cool among the under-21 set, makers for Ramses Safe Play plan to advertise on the hip cable channel, which reaches nearly 55 million households.
"There is a real social imperative to provide to the young U.S. people a product with which they feel empathetic and which can persuade them to protect themselves in these dangerous times," said Kenneth A. Matthews, president of London International Group, the condoms' manufacturer.
Every year, 2.5 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases are reported among America's teens. An estimated one million teen-age girls get pregnant annually. Teen-agers have one of the fastest-rising rates of infection with HIV of any group in the nation.
London International Group began marketing Safe Play condoms in England in November 1990, along with a comparable product called Jeans, sold in a cigarette pack, in Italy. The condoms are regular lubricated Ramses condoms, with or without spermicide. The U.S. version, which will retail for $3 to $3.50 a six-pack, will hit drugstores here early next year and the airwaves shortly thereafter.
MTV is currently the only network that has agreed to air commercials for Safe Play Condoms. Two other -- unnamed -- networks are currently looking at storyboards for Safe Play commercials. "They have our materials but still have not given us clearance to air commercials," said Barry Miller, vice president of Marketing for Schmid Laboratories, London International's North American division.
While Fox Network recently broadcast a spot sponsored by Trojan condoms, it was a public service announcement, not a commercial. Thus far, no condom commercial has aired on a U.S. television network.
Safe Play's manufacturer company is marketing its newest product with caution, emphasizing that the condoms are "designed for teens who are already sexually active," Miller said.
"Unfortunately, people don't always separate the issue of sexuality from the issue of safe sex."
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