New York has had its own condom (with lettering based on subway signage) since 2007; it launched the contest a year ago to add another wrapper. The winning design (based on the power button found on digital devices) was introduced two months ago at a Halloween parade. An assistant health commissioner was dressed as a condom queen.
The Big Apple will distribute more than 41 million free condoms this year, with the apparent added benefit that commercial sales of all brands in the city increased at twice the national rate, said Carol Carrozza vice president of marketing for LifeStyles Condoms, citing Nielsen data.
Philadelphia gives out a mere 1.5 million prophylactics a year, including 60,000 female condoms. It has strong incentives to distribute more.
The city's rates of sexually transmitted diseases are among the highest in the country. The one bright spot has been a decade-long decline in gonorrhea. It tends to run in cycles, and preliminary reports for the first nine months of this year show a 33 percent increase compared with the same period in 2009.
Condoms are a key tool against STDs and AIDS.
An ideal public health campaign uses a simple idea in multiple ways to create cultural change, said Jay A. Winsten, director of the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Health Communication. A condom contest makes sense as a first step, he said.
"People have already gotten the public health message. They just are not acting on it often enough or consistently enough. You have to make it cool," he said, using as an example how people now "feel good about being a designated driver."
