Condom Sense: Prioritizing Condom Use

Prosocial messages in public health campaigns are important to foster an understanding about sexuality, specifically sexual knowledge and sexual risk behaviors.  In an increasingly diverse media landscape it’s important to question not just the availability of prosocial messages surrounding sexual health but also who is producing these messages and how are they being disseminated throughout society. Both Delgado & Austin and Joyce and Harwood pointed out that adolescents today live in an increasingly saturated media environment. But their studies focused either mainly on public service announcements or user-generated videos. I thought it would be interesting to broaden the range and look at advertisements produced by the condom company, Trojan and see what kind of message the content of their ads contributes to a conversation about condom use.  Delgado and Austin reported that teens exposed to public service announcements were 2.3 times more likely to report condom use than non-viewers (2007). This speaks to the power of seeing sexual health messages that encourage condom use in the media. But does the power of these messages change when the producer of the message is also the producer of the product?

In one of Trojan’s commercials, two men are seen in a Laundromat observing multiple women and checking them out, evidently trying to decide whether or not they want to sleep with any of them. The ad shows important consequences for having unprotected sex by showing women displaying multiple symptoms of STD’s such as facial sores and crabs (yum). If you can forget for a second how sexually demeaning and disgusting this commercial is and look at it from an educational standpoint, it would appear to me that the commercial is effective in showing the risks involved in having unprotected sex in a way that I haven’t seen on television or in movies. It blatantly shows symptoms of STD’s rather than just vaguely referring to them often retrospectively after sexual acts.  

Another component that might contribute to the prosocial content of this commercial would be its ability to resonate with the audience. It would appear to me that Trojan is trying to make the characters in this commercial as relatable as possible. Neither the characters nor the setting of the commercial are highly glamorized or sensationalized which makes the characters seem like everyday average people, thus relatable to most viewers. When audiences can identify with characters in commercials who act as mouthpieces for producers, it is more likely that they will adopt message-consistent attitudes that condoms are a vital part of sexual activity (Joyce & Harwood, 2014).

Advertisements are an outlet that were not addressed in either reading but, I think, can be an important contributor to prosocial messages about sexual health and risk-reduction behaviors. While some of their messages about sexual health risks might be exaggerated to emphasize the importance of condom use (after all they are a condom company and want to sell condoms!), Trojan presents characters that a youthful audience can identify with thus making it more likely that adolescent audiences will adopt message-consistent attitudes that condom use is vital to sexual health. This is not to say that Trojan’s condom advertisements, or condom advertisements in general, are the answer to all of our sexual health education needs. Condom companies are going to hyperbolize the negative consequences of not using a condom to sell more of their product. Additionally, in their advertisements condom companies are likely to glorify sex and make it seem as though everyone is having it and those who aren’t should be. This reinforcement of both sex as a social norm and protected sex over abstinence is somewhat problematic but at least there is a media outlet that is highlighting negative consequences of unprotected sex in a way that allows audiences to relate to content and characters.  

References: 

Joyce, N., & Harwood, J. (2014). Context and identification in persuasive mass communication. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 26(1), 5—57.