![]() ![]() It would also utilise targeted and tailored tactics for key stakeholders such as medical professionals, LGBTQI+ and CALD community groups and high schools (Tier 2 of engagement). In 2021, Grim Reaper would be presented as part of an integrated communications campaign aimed engaging with its target audiences across a mix of paid, earned, shared and owned channels, with a heavy emphasis on online channels and social media (Tier 1 of Johnston & Taylor’s Tiers of Engagement). The media and communications landscape has evolved dramatically since the Grim Reaper aired in 1987. The Grim Reaper commercial was one effective tool in a strategic public health arsenal. Australia was an early adopter of prevention strategies such as needle exchange for intravenous drug users, safe sex education in schools and the testing of blood donations (Stylianou, 2010). The Australian government took an integrated, multi-faceted approach to the crisis. Realistically however, no single commercial or image can claim this level of success for itself. In this way, the campaign was effective, likely in part due to the way it seared itself into Australians minds. Infection rates fell by almost half in the decade following the commercial. Was the Grim Reaper responsible for halting HIV/AIDS in its tracks among the heterosexual community in Australia?Ĭertainly, the catastrophe of ‘more Australians dead than World War 1’ did not eventuate. If we accept Heath et al’s (2018) definition of Strategic Communication as ‘the purposeful, normative use of communication functions and discourse processes by organizations to accomplish their missions’, we need to look to the outcome to determine whether the campaign was also effective. It threatens death as a consequence of failure to act, and clearly states the action required: “ If you have sex have just one safe partner, or always use condoms. The commercial is confronting – the images are bleak, the voiceover foreboding. Is the Grim Reaper an example of the effective use of strategic communication to address a ‘wicked’ problem? Or is the commercial merely notorious for its confronting imagery and unprecedented bluntness? This is something I’ve meditated on each week we as we’ve explored the theories and concepts of strategic communication. It’s a commercial so firmly embedded in the Australian psyche that even some born in the nineties would identify it as one of Australia’s most iconic public health campaigns. The commercial, funded by the Australian Government, was aimed at addressing an increasing number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the heterosexual community. I was not quite two years old when the infamous ‘Grim Reaper’ AIDS awareness commercial was broadcast on Australian television for three weeks in 1987.
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