• by Les Luchter , December 19, 2025

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has had quite a December out-of-home.

The campaigns, created in-house and placed by OOH agency Billups, began Dec. 1 on World AIDS Day with the message “2.7 million lives in care” emblazoned not only on traditional billboards but on boats, storefronts, vans, trucks, taxis and more in nearly 28 U.S. cities and six global markets: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K.  In all, 2,900 total outdoor adds appeared through Dec. 7.

The content, which also included the lines “World AIDS Day” and “AHF -- AIDS Healthcare Foundation,” resulted in over 47 million total impressions, a Billups spokesperson tells Marketing Daily.

Billups credits the help of some 25 outdoor ad companies “willing to run sensitive public health creative in public spaces.” These included such stalwarts as Clear Channel, Outfront Media and the UK’s Ocean Outdoor.

Billups has been working with AHF on the latter’s OOH campaigns for 13 years, with the spokesperson noting that there’s been one goal over that time: “making sexual health and HIV testing visible in a culture where stigma still keeps people silent…When a community sees the same message at the same time in public, it changes what feels discussable. That’s how normalization starts and testing stops being taboo.”

Testing is the focus of one of two other three-month campaigns that began recently.

“Just Say Ahhh!,” reads content showing a cotton swab entering a patient’s mouth.

In this case, that common medical command is promoting price-free, needle-free, STD testing.

The ads directs viewers to freeSTDcheck.org, while Spanish-language versions (“Solo Di Ahhh!”) point people to pruebasdeITSgratuitas.org.

AHF’s second new campaign, sporting the message “50 Countries – 2.7 Million in Care” with the URL aidshealth.org., is -- like the World AIDS Day effort -- a general branding effort celebrating the nonprofit’s addition of Bangladesh to its areas of service. AHF, which launched in 1987, now has more than 1,000 clinics in 50 countries.

Both current campaigns consist of billboards, bus interior cards, bus benches, posters, and transit shelters.

They’re both running in U.S. markets where AHF has clinics and wellness centers, which total 38 cities in 18 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

AHF tells Marketing Daily that the size and scope are comparable to two previous campaigns it launched in July, one targeting stigma -- “HIV Stigma Sucks” -- the other also for STD testing (“Testing is Caring”; “La Prueba Es Cariño”).

The nonprofit says it rotates in new messaging every quarter, with the general goal of driving traffic to its facilities.

“The global public health system is profoundly broken and must be repaired. STDs here and abroad are at pandemic levels and being ignored,” AHF President Michael Weinstein said in a statement. “The responsibility of bringing as many people as possible into the lifeboat of care remains staggering but is a challenge that AHF will continue to rise to.”