In both substance and form, this campaign used entertainment as a way to make a serious message of prevention be remembered. In substance, we used music to speak about protected love without being moralizing. We collaborated with famous French artists to cover their songs, but with a twist – we adapted the original versions to include safe sex messages. Sometimes with emotion, sometimes with humour. Regarding the form, we produced a karaoke-like version of the remixed songs, so that everyone could read, sing, and remember the message, bringing popular music and popular culture together to serve an awareness campaign.

23% of HIV cases concern the over fifties. Yet this population feels less affected by the problem and doesn’t always take the necessary precautions to protect themselves. The goal of the campaign was to therefore find an idea and a medium that could reach this population and convey an important message in a positive and popular way, without being moralizing.

We wanted our campaign to reach the over-50s as they are less exposed to messages about the prevention of HIV, but at the same time, we didn’t want to blame them. So we chose cult hits from their youth, performed by artists they loved and still loved, and we rewrote and recorded new versions of their songs that were about sex and love, with a safety message. We wanted to create a powerful cultural object that could be easily remembered.

All of the songs and karaoke clips are still available on Spotify, Deezer, YouTube « Les Tubes Qui Protègent » and on the website : lestubesquiprotegent.fr

Unsurprisingly, it’s easier to listen to our favourite singers and songs rather than to moralizing speeches, even if both can deliver the same message… So, we teamed up with various famous French singers to remind people that even over 50, love must be protected.

This campaign was aimed at the French general public and all the re-recorded songs are major cult hits from France in the 80s, therefore directly reaching our target audience. They marked their youth and are still played today on radios, in night clubs and at weddings, etc

The songs were rewritten to include safe sex messages and recorded in the legendary Ferber and Saint Germain studios in Paris. We then made video clips with the new lyrics and the original artists, to air on social media. The playlist was also available on streaming platforms and radio stations.

After re-writing the lyrics and asking the original artists and their lyricists to endorse them, we recorded the adapted songs using the same melodies. The singers therefore sang their own songs, but with new words that conveyed the HIV prevention message.

The songs and their video clips were aired online on a dedicated website, on social media, national radios, Spotify and Deezer playlists and even sent out in PR kits in the form of vinyl records.

The campaign took place over the period of a month, but all the songs are still available.

With this initiative, we reasserted our notoriety with our target audience who had forgotten about us many years ago.

This demographic group is also the part of the population most likely to donate to charity, so it was very important for the association, and for the conveying of the public health message, to appeal to them. And this is indeed what the campaign, and the cultural object it relies on, managed to do:

2.1 million streams on music platforms

24.6 million people exposed to the campaign

51.7K interactions

2.4 million euros of earned media (+147.6% compared to 2021)

+24% donations compared to 2021