Reinventing the Condom

Teen pregnancy prevention campaigns have helped reduce the teen birth rate to a record low in the US, but there are pockets of teens living a very different story. In several low-income areas of urban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the teen birth rate is more than three times the US national average (on par with third-world countries) and sexually transmitted infections are the highest in the country.

In these areas, teens are receiving the message about condom use and pregnancy prevention, they're just ignoring it. They don't view condoms as cool or relatable, plus condoms can be embarrassing to purchase. This got Cramer-Krasselt to thinking: if messaging isn't the problem, maybe the product is. Maybe teen pregnancy prevention didn't need a new campaign, it needed a new condom. So, the agency created a new kind of condom and named them Naughty Bags. 

The sole purpose of Naughty Bags is to be a condom brand that resonates with urban teens, one that's approachable, fun, free and will ultimately change how teens feel about using condoms. The team changed everything about typical condoms—from the form factor of the packaging to the design approach of the wrappers—to signal that Naughty Bags are something different. To ensure Naughty Bags hit the mark, part of the agency's process even included focus groups with teens from the target areas.

In the first three months of the launch, there was an overwhelming response with more than 30,000 condoms distributed to a target audience of just 19,000 urban Milwaukee teens. And this is just the beginning.