The Cape Argus is Cape Town’s largest daily newspaper. The paper undertakes to support a few public initiatives every year. World AIDS Day is one of them. We incorporated relevant AIDS statistics at the top of every page, using the standard page numbers in the paper’s daily layout. i.e. where it says page 6, we incorporated the following statistic: 6 million people in South Africa are living with HIV.

Using an advertising space that’s never been used before (thereby ensuring the statistics were the first thing people saw when viewing a page) allowed us to achieve maximum impact. The ads stood out compared to other World AIDS Day messages, enabling us to assist in increasing World AIDS Day awareness.

By utilising media space that has never been used in an advertising landscape before, we were able to engage our readers. Our communication was the first thing the reader saw when turning each page, and almost impossible to miss. The statistics were gathered from UNICEF and the South African Department of Health.

Whenever a reader turned another page, they would see another ad/statistic, and because these don’t look like regular ads and weren’t in a space where you’d normally find ads, people took note and didn’t just gloss over them. Especially seeing as they were on every page; 39 pages in total.