The past eight years of ultra-conservative party rule in Poland have been evidence of the dominance of conservative values. A prime example of freedom restricting actions was the tightening of abortion laws, coupled with limited access to contraceptives and a lack of comprehensive sexual education. Any attempts to introduce such education were met with accusations of sexualizing children and promoting LGBTQ+ ideologies.

In Poland, independent organizations face challenges in organizing school classes and lack government funding for their activities while schools focus on conservative topics like natural fertility control, marital sex and sexual abstinence. This has led to a rise in depression and suicide rates among teenagers, who lack reliable knowledge about sexuality, struggle with body acceptance, and often lack parental support in navigating these difficult subjects. The "Art of SexEd" campaign is of paramount importance in a country that suppresses access to essential knowledge for young people.

Durex art of sexed case public
Public debate about sex education often focuses on when and what young people learn about sex. However, we know that systemically this topic needs greater involvement in Poland. And young people still start their sexual lives full of anxiety and fear, relying on pornography and advice from older friends. The Durex brand, together with the Ponton Group, strives for young people to strengthen the belief that sexuality is a normal part of who we are, and knowledge about it is key to ensuring health and safety.

Karolina Wierzbicka-Gajda

Category Manager Wellbeing PLEE, Reckitt Benckiser

For the third consecutive year, Poland ranks last in the Contraception Policy Atlas Europe, which ranks countries on access to contraceptive counseling, supplies and online information about modern contraception, and the number of HIV cases in Poland has doubled in the last decade.

At the same time, rather than prioritizing student health and enabling independent sex education classes in schools, the Polish educational system prioritizes classical values and art and urges schools to take students to art museums across Poland.

We found a way to bypass the restrictions of the Polish education system by transforming 100 paintings from major Polish museums into a sex education medium. Through the use of augmented reality, we provided contextually related educational content in a new and interactive way in a country notorious for its resistance to progressive reforms. By visiting the Durex website, pointing a camera at the painting and scanning it, every student can receive content in a straightforward and easy-to-digest format so that lessons designed to teach conservative values became an opportunity for two million teenagers visiting museums every semester to access reliable sex education.

The campaign was structured into three phases – explore, experience and act – and was implemented across relevant youth touchpoints like TikTok, Snapchat and Brainly, a homework platform, to inform about the project and build traffic to the website to inspire exploration and experience. A group of TikTokers created content showcasing how art can unlock sexual education. Shockingly, the campaign's assets were blocked on these platforms, and influencers' content received a shadow ban, limiting their reach to only 63% of the average results, a 37% decrease in reach, and blocking paid support.

In the final "act" campaign phase, Durex teamed up with Ponton, a sex educators NGO, to provide a way for youths to fight for access to proper sex education in schools by signing a petition addressed to MPs in government. Despite facing obstacles and censorship, Durex empowered young people to take action for their own sexual health.

The campaign gathered significant media attention, reaching over 19 million within the initial weeks, out of which almost 15.5 million were attributed to earned media. Despite SoMe campaign obstacles like blocked assets and the influencers’ shadow ban, Durex reached half of the 15-to-18-year-old population in Poland, over 920k youths. With "The Art of SexEd" Durex can provide reliable sexual education to approximately two million teenagers who visit Polish museums every semester.

The website had over 400k user-generated page views in the first three weeks, with an average of 21 pages per session, and an impressive 3 minutes and 37 seconds of content exploration despite youths' traditionally low attention span. The numbers are growing due to the ongoing surge in educational trips in Polish schools. The campaign effectively engaged young people to take action for their own sexual health by signing a petition and during the first week it garnered more than 1,600 signatures, with the numbers continuing to increase.

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