The campaign immediately started to spread by word-of-mouth. People took pictures or videos and shared them all over the internet. Even the national news reported about the campaign at prime time.But what is more important: the campaign created a picture that touched people lastingly and really made an impact. A welcome side effect was the increase of donations by 10.6% which were urgently needed.

Every 18 seconds somebody dies of AIDS.To make this frightfully high death rate seizable we needed to represent every AIDS victim individually. On billboards we displayed our strong message and pictured all the names of the 1.752 million AIDS victims.Behind the billboards we installed machines that produced foam and nourished it with helium.The foam was pressed automatically through a cross shaped stencil and was cut every 18 seconds.So from behind the billboards that displayed the names of the AIDS victims one helium-foam-cross rose to the sky every 18 seconds. Each cross representative for one person who died of AIDS.

In the city promotion-teams provided further information-material with integrated QR codes which automatically led people to the donation-site of the Deutsche AIDS-Stiftung e.V.

Even though about 1.752 million people die of AIDS every year worldwide, AIDS is loosing significance in our civilised world. So how can we communicate this deadly disease to its full extent and bring the consequences of AIDS back to peolpe’s minds?Certainly not by creating the next unnoticed campaign – but by representing each AIDS victim individually. A simple calculation gave us the idea. 1.752 million AIDS victims per year means: every 18 seconds somebody dies of AIDS.