AIDS PPSA a huge success!

He was big and bald. When he smiled you couldn’t help but smile back – and he smiled a lot. Maybe I was getting a little tired, but I remember thinking his voice sounded like coffee – powerful, warm, and rich. The doctor who spoke before him had taught us the science and she had a great animation of how HIV infects human cells. It looked like aliens on attack – scary. Then he stood up and with that smile told us he was HIV positive. He told us about his life making us laugh with him at some of his biggest challenges. He told us his big wish used to be living to see his daughter graduate from high school but now he was going to have to come up with some other milestone because that was happening this year and he is doing great. The image of the alien was gone, he was our new face on HIV. And I think his attitude was the most powerful influence our work in the AIDS Personal Public Service Announcement Project.

We finished up the AIDS Personal Public Service Announcement Project (AIDS PPSA) in Philadelphia on Wednesday, 11/7 <http://www.nmi.uga.edu/aids_ppsa/>. WOW! The AIDS PPSA was our way of exploring how we can use mobile media to fight AIDS. Student teams from the University of Georgia, University of South Carolina, and Temple University traveled around the City of Brotherly Love (and, yeah, everyone there was amazingly friendly) collecting material for a new type of video message. They used Verizon’s EVDO (that is technical talk for blazing fast) network to push footage back to brave producers locked in hotel rooms. In one day, they had to conceptualize, plan, shoot and edit a personal public service announcement capable of being distributed to cell phones. I tried to act confident that it all would work, but secretly I set a low threshold for success – if one of the three teams was able to produce a single personal public service announcement we would be happy. So I was shocked when these three teams produced ten great pieces! Did I say “WOW!?”

On the Tuesday night before the actual shooting began, teams of experts gave presentations about AIDS and HIV infection, health marketing, and even the mobile technology the students would use. Planning the orientation, I worried that we had too much information to present. Would the students and producers be overwhelmed? Would they be able to distill all the facts, statistics, and science into something that would make sense on the small screen of a cell phone. But when he stood up and told his story (and I am not using his name because it isn’t my right to disclose anyone’s HIV status but my own), it clicked. The research findings proved that AIDS isn’t a death sentence, but it took seeing him so full of life to convince us.

Because of him, the PPSAs the students presented weren’t scary or ominous. They were irreverent, funny, and full of the smiles he gave off. The videos showcased the new facts everyone had learned: that testing was quick and easy; that it is a responsibility in a relationship to share your status: that new treatments had converted HIV infection from a death sentence into a chronic manageable health like diabetes or hypertension (all of them can kill you without proper care). The health marketing experts involved told us the messages weren’t at all what they expected. The students picked up on things professionals took for granted or overlooked. The PPSAs were different because they sought to convince young people to be tested by presenting the stories that young people themselves found the most compelling.

The AIDS Personal Public Service Announcement Project was a tremendous success. And although we used a lot of technology, the key to success wasn’t the technology. Sure, Verizon gave us the tools for a new way of creating persuasive messages. There were so many Verizon people with us all day long, it was kind of like that commercial with the Verizon army behind each call (the only thing missing was the guy with the funny glasses saying, “Can you hear me now?”) But the technology just played a supporting role. It was the people who pushed through all sorts of challenges to make it all work who were the stars.

Now I know that you all are dying to see the videos. But we have one more step to go through with them. We are fact-checking each video to make sure they are accurate and correct before we release them to the world. But if you want to see a preview of the PPSAs in their draft form, you can come to our next Digital Brown Bag on Tuesday (11/13) at 12:30P in the NMI (more on that below). When we have them cleared, I will be pushing them out to you over the web. And the next step is to get them on your cell phone. That will happen by Worlds AIDS Day on December 1st.