The Campaign

AIDS Concern is a local NGO dwarfed by renowned charities such as WWF, Orbis, UNICEF and more. That did not stop it from having a huge ambition: to expose Hong Kong’s hidden stigma towards HIV carriers and to change people’s minds about them. To do this, it took an understanding that stigma happens when there’s unnecessary fear in daily activities. AIDS Concern chose to demonstrate this by sending a coffee truck to five busy areas, serving free coffee made by people with HIV and documenting how the public would react. Half of the pedestrians rejected the coffee, causing a storm of conversation online. The controversial experience was covered by numerous local and international press, blogs and social media. As a result, over a third of Hong Kong’s population was reached by the campaign. 97% of respondents say this has made them see people with HIV more positively. AIDS organisations from France and Taiwan have contacted AIDS Concern to adopt the project in their home countries. Most importantly, the HIV+ community in Hong Kong were touched and grateful for the support from the general public. All of this was achieved with only US$30K to spend for everything in the campaign.

The Brief

A 2014 Stigma Watch Study revealed 4 in 5 people with HIV hide their status from their own families due to the attached stigmas. Part of AIDS Concern’s charter is to achieve zero HIV-related stigma in Hong Kong. In order to achieve this, we need to: Raise awareness of Hong Kong’s stigma towards people with HIV Change the attitude towards people with HIV Anything but a conventional approach would achieve this. They had to also tackle this problem using the no more than US$30K

Creative Execution

On 29 November 2014, we sent a coffee truck to five of the city’s busiest areas offering free coffee made by people with HIV. Over three days, promoters invited pedestrians up for a cup. On the truck was a sign that read: “Made by people living with HIV” to confront freebie-loving HongKongers with a question: “Would you take one?” We recorded the experience and shared it online. Our use of celebrity influencers helped to spread the message online through social media and traditional news outlets. This was an activation to address AIDS Concern’s charter of Zero-HIV-Related-Stigma by engaging with the general public of Hong Kong. This work is also about confronting the issue and eliciting an immediate response in order to address it. We used a coffee truck to bring this issue out into the open and force people to question their preexisting beliefs.

2.3 million people were reached by this campaign, breaking records in AIDS Concern’s 25-year history. This is equivalent to a third of Hong Kong’s population. With a campaign budget of US$30K inclusive of media and production costs, that’s US$.013 per person reached. The awareness was greatly amplified by the international coverage that was earned, including over a dozen press articles, two radio interviews, 50 blog posts in five different languages and over 300 social media posts. On Facebook alone, the film of the experience achieved over 3,700 likes, comments and shares. From an independently conducted study, 97% of research respondents say they see people with HIV more positively after watching the film that documented the experience. AIDS-related organisations in France and Taiwan have contracted AIDS Concern to adopt the campaign in their own country. This demonstrates the scalability of such a simple yet disruptive idea.

We needed a non-threatening way to communicate with our target audience. Fear is the biggest cause of stigma towards people with HIV. The way to battle fear is with conversation. What better way to start a conversation than over coffee?