AIDS is a Mass Murder - Essay Example

? “AIDS Is A Mass Murderer” Analyze the controversial Social Marketing campaign “AIDS is a mass murderer” The public health community is often required to intervene in the matters of regarding health conditions of individuals. (Laura McDermott, 2005). In this case, the concept of social marketing is brought into mind. Social marketing is ‘the application of marketing to the solution of social and health problems’. (Kotler P. a., 1971). The concept revolves around knowing that many problems that come into being related to behavior are usually caused by health related problems. This is how marketing is prone of understanding the health problems of people to address the behavioral aspect of it. Social marketing has been evolved into focusing entirely on benefiting the society. It pushes for non-profit based marketing. (MacFadyen, 2003).Social marketing itself ensures that the design, implementation and control of programs seek the acceptability of a social idea or any practice that is focused entirely on a specific target group. (Kotler P. a., 1975). Social marketing has been taken in the wrong context by some people and the confusion of understanding the purpose of it became a problem. (Dubinsky, 1985). Some expected gaining the benefit of products being sold while others looked as social marketing as a campaign that would boost the sales of their products in the long run. Just like commercial marketing, the usage of social marketing is to persuade people towards protecting themselves from health hazards and environmental hazards. (Weinreich). The product is not necessarily a physical product that is being offered to the public, but instead it could be a message to the public to help them understand the dangers of a health hazard. (Weinreich). The usage of the marketing mix may be useful in implementing an effective social marketing campaign. This technique is being used internationally by health programs in order to influence the social behavior of the people it is targeting. (Weinreich). The method of social marketing is basically adapting with commercial marketing methods to focus on the social front instead of a product promotion.(Nations). Products are made available to those who fall in the category of individuals who are paid low incomes. Condoms, for example, sometimes fall into this category and are promoted with this method to ensure that individuals are educated about birth control methods and AIDS prevention methods. Earlier, condoms were considered to have been purchased only by sex workers and were usually hidden behind the desk of pharmacies but with social marketing, people are being educated about the benefits of condoms and are becoming a product of normal usage. With this development, social marketing programs can also help populations overcome problems and lead of effective HIV/AIDS prevention. (Nations). There have also been misunderstandings among people about how social marketing programs compete with the public health sector system. This is incorrect; such programs are only existent to support the public health sector. These programs, in fact, pressurize the public health sector to improve their services and utilize their resources more effectively and efficiently. They also help individuals who fear going in public and purchasing condoms. (Nations). This awareness increase in the understanding of AIDS/HIV with such programs has started to show a relatively promising impact on limiting the disease. Now the impact is majorly on increasing the confidence level of the high-risk individuals which would require tackling barriers in communication and understanding. AIDS protection programs are trying to destroy the social stigma that has been created. This is by discouraging people from discrimination and to prevent them from getting to such a point where individuals with AIDS are embarrassed to be seen in public. Destroying the social stigma that has been created is the core step to understanding and assessing the risks involved with HIV/AIDS. Public understanding and public acceptance of individuals with the HIV virus and AIDS should help bring openness in the community and be able to let these individuals openly claim that they have the virus before they have sex with anyone else. Risky sex should be understood rather than keeping it underground. AIDS campaigns focus on these areas through advertising with different methods. The learning strategy is the best that could be brought out to reinforce the awareness of people about how and why to change how they behave around infected people and to encourage them to take preventive effective methods to protect others from getting infected with HIV. (SLusk, 2007). Prevention alone is the sole method of completely eliminating AIDS from the world and by keeping the sanctity of sex being with one individual could help in reducing the spread of the infection. High-risk individuals should also be kept in mind and should be well educated about the risks involved in their activities. Only by proper education and prevention methods this risk could be eliminated as a whole. International AIDS prevention programs have generally never resorted to infiltrating the public with a fear about transmission till the campaign of “AIDS is a mass murderer” campaign. Previous attempts have always tried to involve knowledge that was based on science and research so as to help individuals make a choice themselves by understanding the infection and what could potentially lead to them getting an HIV infection. The campaign initiated by the German based company, Rogenbogen, has tackled the AIDS/HIV epidemic by creating a fear into the minds of individuals. On the posters, the company used pictures of world renowned mass murderer dictators. The posters of the campaign have Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein, which all seem to direct into a fear. The campaign itself gained an incredible amount of coverage but mostly negative outcomes of it were taken. Many have taken the campaign to be a personal attack on AIDS victims by recognizing them as mass murderers. This would be a boost on the social stigma that is already existent. Many AIDS campaigns are out there in the open to help people understand how and why AIDS needs to be feared. “AIDS is a mass murderer” seems to have the most lime light in these ads. The ad campaign focuses on showing dictators who have been responsible for the cause of many innocent people being murdered. They also seem to send a print message to the world “you have to protect yourself”. The German AIDS ad pushes on strong emotions by using Adolf Hitler in the advertisement. The advertisement shows a couple having sex in a dimly lit room with music playing in the background. The back of the man’s head is seen till the end after which the camera reveals Adolf Hitler. At the very end a slogan appears on the screen: “AIDS is a mass murderer”. (Moore T. , 2008). The advertisement appears to start as a typical commercial made for a perfume which radically takes a twist at the end by revealing Adolf Hitler. On the negative side, research groups point out that the advertisement has a stigmatizing effect on people who suffer from AIDS/HIV who already face social stigma and are discriminated from. The main concern of these organizations is that the campaign will resultantly end with people being discouraged from being tested for diseases because they would be linked to “mass murderers”. German organizations that focus on the prevention of AIDS argue that the message conveyed in this advertisement is not appropriate and many people are not taking it into the context in which it was intended. These organizations say that the advertisement might be conveying a partial message but at the same time it also stigmatizes those who have the virus. The German umbrella group, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, referred to the campaign as aggravating and ridiculing the victims of the Nazi regime. The message derived has led to others into relating to HIV/AIDS victims as mass murderers. The group wants more factual information involved in the prevention of AIDS rather than using methods which provoke anxiety among people. (Moore T. , 2008). Other groups have referred to the advertisement as a provocative commercial which has been made to scare young people into using condoms by associating AIDS to Hitler. (Moore M. , 2009). This advertisement was released in 2009 to go hand in hand with World AIDS day but HIV/AIDS based organizations have been distancing themselves from it since then by saying that the advertisement is making it difficult to live for suffers. Also, these organizations say that the advertisement is inaccurate because there are methods to help people suffering from HIV to live normal and prevents HIV from reaching the stage of AIDS. Some of the members of Regenbogen who were victims of AIDS even raised concerns that sufferers would be presented with a negative view but the shock level involved would help in the prevention of the spread of AIDS. (Moore M. , 2009). NAT, the UK based organization, also criticized on how the advertisement campaign stigmatizes HIV/AIDS effected individuals. They pointed out that stigma is the largest barrier between organizations and individuals who have the virus. This is what leads to victims refraining from testing for AIDS in fear of possibly having it and being downed by social pressure. It also develops a fear among these people from having frank discussions and the sexual risks involved. Secondly, NAT mentions that the advertisement has no mention of the effective treatments for HIV and that people who have been diagnosed with it can live a normal life-span. Third, that the campaign shares no information about the preventive methods that can be used. NAT also mentions that shock tactics can be used but usage of them irresponsibly can lead to people not listening. (NAT, 2009). The AIDS problem has generally been a problem which has not been paid much attention to in Germany. Therefore, encouragement is needed about getting educated about the problem and how condoms can actually help in the prevention of AIDS. Facts about AIDS are that over 28 million have died because of this virus and everyday 5,000 more fall victim to it. According to the website: “AIDS one of the largest mass murderers of all time”.(AIDS is a mass murderers). Germany alone has over 60,000 people living with HIV. The video has been seen all over the internet and has been shared across media based platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. The campaign itself has received an incredible amount of positive feedback ranging from young people to parents. (Moore T. , 2008). Advertising on AIDS/HIV is basically advertising for a social cause. It is done to emphasize on the behavioral goals for a social good. That is how social marketing can be used to promote and build a marketing front of the merit goods or to push the society away from demerit goods. AIDS, in such an example, could be referred to as a demerit good. Social marketing focuses on primarily a social good that it can do to make people understand. It is done to bring about awareness to the people about things that can help the society as a whole develop into something better. Health campaigns because a major object of social marketing and these later with time diversified into more. There is also a misunderstanding among individuals about social marketing. Social marketing itself is not necessarily for a not-for-profit cause. The objective of social marketing is primarily for a social good and the purpose of the video was just to focus on the social aspect of what AIDS actually is. AIDS is a primary center of many social marketing organizations with the objective to eliminating the threat completely. They try to bring out that threat and help people understand the dangers involved in sexual relationships with partners who are not safe. Therefore, they try to focus on circulating around the concept of having only one safe partner to indulge in sex with or to always use a condom to prevent the chances to being infected by AIDS. The advertisers point out that they wanted to give the virus a face and not the victims of the virus. They wanted to attract attention to the topic of AIDS and by using the faces of despised murderers. The company felt that previous advertisement campaigns by the government did not have such positive feedback from the general public and nor did slogans such as “Don’t Give AIDS a Chance”. Silz, of Das Comitee, argues that the campaign was not at all explicit when it focuses on preventive methods and that protecting yourself is more appropriate to the mind. (Hans, 2009). Silz also focused on how the campaign was a “radical step” and that the use of dictators as figures has been used in the past. (Hans, 2009). They wanted to push the idea of AIDS into the minds of people and also force them into realizing that AIDS is still the cause of many people dying every day. They used Hitler as the face of AIDS to show the extent of its evilness and make young people realize that AIDS is still very much a threat that needs to be taken into consideration when they indulge in sexual activities with others. The press officer, Jan Schewertner, emphasized on how they were not the first to have used dictators in to AIDS. The campaign was addressed in such a way to shock the public and to circulate around. Schewertner also mentioned that the strategies which have been used in the past need to be reassessed in such a way that young people in particular would have a positive reaction to the advertisement. (Hans, 2009). The advertisement itself has created an impact on the public and became the talk of the town among people. The company, Regenbogen, feels that British based organizations fear that the German company may have taken the lime light and donations will now be directed to them instead of the British AIDS trust. Regenbogen also points out that AIDS is an illness which requires everyone to be well educated about and those British based organizations should not create politics out of this by finding flaws in social marketing purposes. References AIDS is a mass murderers. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2011, 2011, from AIDS Statistics: http://www.aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com Dubinsky, P. J. (1985). Identification and Classification of Problems Associated With Evaluating Social Marketing Efforts. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 75-90. Hans, B. (2009, July 9). In Bed with Hitler. Retrieved November 28, 2011, from Spiegel Online: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,647497,00.html Kotler, P. a. (1971). “Social marketing: An approach to planned social change. Journal of Marketing, 3-12. Kotler, P. a. (1975). Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Laura McDermott, M. S. (2005). What Is and What Is Not Social Marketing: The Challenge of Reviewing the Evidence. Journal of Marketing Management , 545-553. MacFadyen, L. S. (2003). Social marketing. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Moore, M. (2009, September 4). Adolf Hitler sex video condemned by AIDS charities. Retrieved Novemeber 28, 2011, from The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/6138037/Adolf-Hitler-sex-video-condemned-by-Aids-charities.html Moore, T. (2008, September 8). Germany's New AIDS Ad — Starring Hitler. Retrieved November 29, 2011, from TIME: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1921012,00.html NAT. (2009, September 9). http://www.nat.org.uk/News-and-Media/Press-Releases/2009/September/NAT-Responds-to-Offensive-HIV-Advert.aspx. Retrieved November 28, 2011, from NAT: Transforming The UK's Response to HIV: http://www.nat.org.uk/News-and-Media/Press-Releases/2009/September/NAT-Responds-to-Offensive-HIV-Advert.aspx Nations, U. (n.d.). Social marketing: An effective tool in the global response to HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS. SLusk. (2007, August 11). Love Life, Stop Aids. Retrieved November 29, 2011, from Social Marketing wiki: http://socialmarketing.wetpaint.com/page/Love+Life,+Stop+Aids Weinreich, N. K. (n.d.). What is Social Marketing? Retrieved December 2, 2011, from Weinreich Communications: http://www.social-marketing.com/Whatis.html Read More