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Matthew Valenzano
Associate Creative Director
The HIV+ Episodes - Casey House
A survey we conducted found 65 million North Americans feel they would be shunned by friends, family and co-workers if they revealed they were HIV+. This stark reality is vastly underrepresented in popular culture: There has never been a mainstream television program that has tackled HIV stigma.
As one of the largest purpose-built HIV/AIDS hospitals in the world, Casey House wanted to continue its multi-year campaign to smash stigma. But we had to show the devastating effects in a way that would make people take notice. So we used beloved characters from Friends and The Office, two of the most streamed shows on earth.
We searched 236 episodes of Friends and 203 episodes of The Office to find scenes that could be re-edited and reordered to create the unthinkable: New episodes where iconic TV characters are HIV+ and facing the isolation of stigma. We hired voice impersonators from across North America to replace dialogue, and lookalikes for each actor, so we could swap voices and faces using innovative post-production. To show the episodes were more than fiction, HIV+ influencers bravely shared their stories on the website, bringing a personal and human viewpoint to HIV stigma.
The launch became a global conversation within 24 hours. With over 200 stories, 10 million social impressions, and 200 million media impressions within the first day of launch. And most impressive, after viewing our episodes, 88% of people felt more empathetic to those who live with HIV.