Here’s an almost good idea from ad agencey BooneOakley, Penis Caskets:
My first impression, as with most vending art projects, was, “Damn, that’s so cool! I wish I was close enough to buy one!” But then, on closer inspection, it misses the mark. Unless there’s some magic of engineering going on, there’s no way this machine could actually vend caskets, so the casket in there is “for display purposes only.” This negates the potential for interactivity and defeats much of the point of using a vending machine in the first place. But then the message is really lame in the first place. Ultimately, it rings out as hollowly as a DARE school assembly, stating the problem in such bipolar terms that you either accept it or reject it, but you can’t actually think about the message and make an informed decision for yourself.
This is a shame, because preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS is a worthwhile cause. I think with any campaign like this, you have to ask yourself, do you want to look cool, or do you want to be cool. This campaign is all about looking cool. If the goal is to get people to use condoms, though, you could take all the money that the campaign cost and put it towards providing free condoms. I’d be willing to bet good money that more transmissions of STDs would be prevented that way. Fortunately for BooneOakley, it’s unlikely that the success of this project will be measured in any way. With an advertising campaign you can measure if it’s successful because there will be a corresponding increase in sales. Theoretically, with a campaign like this, one could also measure a decrease in new HIV/AIDS cases. I suspect that MTV is more interested in appearing to make a difference than actually making a difference, and they’ll never bother to test for success.
Just look at the juxtaposition of the Penis Casket vendor and the condom vendor. That condom vendor is bleak, white, boring. Taken together, the whole piece reads, “Condoms: they totally suck, but they’re better than death.” It seems to me a much better approach would be to up-sell the condoms, like they did in the Golden Age of Condom Vending Machines, back in the ’70s:
If the goal is to get more people using condoms, make the condoms more enjoyable to use! As Robin Williams once said, “God gave us a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to use both at the same time.” An appeal to reason will have little effect on a man in heat. However, the promise of More Better Sex just might get through.
If Google is any indication, The Penis Casket campaign seems to have been a complete failure (unless it hasn’t actually started yet). The only search result was this blog entry by a woman who auditioned for a part in the Penis Casket commercial. The only other reference I could find to it was in Communication Arts magazine. It’s probably just as well. Vending machine art should be much cooler.
