This marks the first time that a South African public service initiative by a public-private NGO partnership has been honoured in this way, proving that the year-old awareness campaign is not only making a significant impact on its youth target market, but also ranks high on their ‘likeability’ list and holds its own amid stiff competition from long-established commercial brands.

“As Scrutinize is a public health campaign that aims to reach young South Africans, the Khuza Award is the ultimate nomination and prize because it’s voted for by young South Africans themselves and shows that social messaging, when done effectively, can be up there with private sector products such as DStv, Coke and Pepsi,” said Richard Delate, Country Programme Director for Communication at Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa.

The Khuza Awards are South Africa’s biggest research-based youth marketing and communications awards. This year, over 3 000 of South Africa’s sharpest critics, aged eight to 22, cast their vote on ads in four categories (TV, print, radio and outdoor).

During the awards ceremony, held in Johannesburg on 24 June 2009, Scrutinize snagged a bronze award in the television category voted for by teenagers. The Khuza study, conducted by HDI Youth Marketeers, found that young South African urbanites love humorous adverts, and that television advertising is the best way to connect with teenagers and young adults. In addition, the Scrutinize campaign was found to have a high ‘talkability’ factor among young South Africans.

“In my 20 years of global advertising work, I’ve never heard of a social marketing campaign featuring in a people’s choice marketing/brand awards and certainly never in one polled amongst teens,” said Bruns, Chief Incubator at Matchboxology. “That Scrutinize was featured in the same breath as Coke, Pepsi and Volkswagen is utterly amazing and even more so in South Africa, where aspiration and the cool factor count for everything.”

The animated advert or ‘animert’ – directed by Cal Bruns and voiced by comedian Joey Rasdien, with animation by Jill Slabbert – was also selected as a finalist in the prestigious International Animation Festival, which was held in France earlier in June.

Scrutinize is a series of animerts that use local slang, identifiable characters and tricky situations that young people can easily relate to, conveying its messages in a fresh, fun and funky way. The Scrutinize campaign aims to raise awareness of HIV among young people and encourage them to take responsibility for risky behaviour – and already, its catchphrases such as “Flip HIV to HI-Victory” are being incorporated into popular culture.

In addition to the television animerts, the campaign has trained over 2 000 peer educators who are using Scrutinize every day to talk to young people in and out of school about the behaviours highlighted in the commercials. The campaign has also activated ongoing Scrutinize Live activities run by DramAidE at 10 formerly disadvantaged tertiary institutions.

The Scrutinize campaign is backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa (JHHESA), the Levi’s® Red for Life initiative and Matchboxology.

A cool global brand such as Levi’s® associating itself with HIV – isn’t that risky business? Not so, according to Debbie Gebhardt, Marketing Director of Levi Strauss & Co South Africa. “Scrutinize has been a great partnership with local and international HIV/AIDS experts,” she says. “The Khuza award reinforces what our research has been telling us: that we’ve pioneered a fresh voice that our consumers are really responding to. It’s testament to the power of combining the brand strengths of a global icon like Levi's® with the best science and insight from the public sector.”