Ogilvy UK

Client: Relate
Product: A Series of vegetable-themed condoms
Title: The Hornicultural Society
Media: OOH, Ambient, Product Design,
Country: UK
Date Of Campaign: MAY 2022

Background: With the biggest rise in STIs being among the over 65s, how do you convince this often difficult-to-persuade age group that, despite what they were taught in schools, condoms aren’t just for stopping unwanted pregnancies, they’re for stopping unwanted diseases.

Idea: We wanted to create beautifully illustrated botanical designs, not only so that they would look like they’d come from something as classy as The Royal Horticultural Society, but also to make illustrations that are suggestive of a clitoris or penis look tasteful, rather than puerile. It also heightens the visual wit to fit with the tone of voice of the campaign. Our illustrations were then applied to our seed packets, to make them look as authentic as possible, with painstaking attention given to every tiny detail. We also blew them up to create huge, disruptive posters for out of home and designed attention grabbing direct mail. Anyone who sees the illustrations won’t look at an onion or aubergine in the same way again.

Results: We gave a hard-to-reach generation an updated sex education, not only with our campaign, but with the huge media attention it garnered. It featured on national news channels. It was discussed on the hugely popular Loose Women. Even the nation’s favourite Dr, Hilary Jones, talked at length about our condoms and the importance of the issue we had raised on Good Morning Britain. We featured in over two hundred media outlets worldwide in the first five days, and generated half a billion in earned media, 1.6 billion impressions and, most importantly, 95% of single pensioners said they would now use condoms.