On October 13, 2026, Australian trade outlet Mi3 published the first results from "The Rise of the STIs," the AI-generated campaign for Four Seasons Naked Condoms that launched on May 12. Independent agency Emotive made it with AI production studio AiCandy Australia, and it runs mainly on Snapchat. Mumbrella described the original as a "Godzilla-style" spectacle in which giant monster versions of gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis wreck Sydney after a couple skips a condom. It drew heavy criticism on LinkedIn ("This is officially the worst thing I've seen this week. Please never do this again.").

Why It Matters

Condoms are a large, low-margin category where the challenger brands cannot match Durex's media budget (see [Reckitt's mTick push](/stories/reckitt-genm-mtick-durex-ky) and [Durex's "Get Wood" stunt](/stories/durex-get-wood-rising-woodley)). AI production changes the maths for them. A spectacle the CEO says would have been a million-dollar VFX job came in at roughly a tenth of that, and the savings went into paid reach. The timing also matters: STI rates among young people keep climbing (see [Europe's surge](/stories/europe-sti-surge-boots-gonorrhoea-vaccine) and [drug-resistant Shigella](/stories/sexually-transmitted-shigella-xdr-rise)), and humour and horror reach Gen Z better than clinical warnings do. The platform choice is part of the result. According to researchers writing in The Conversation this week, Meta bans ads for sexual and reproductive health products unless they are deemed to specifically target adults, and Australian HIV campaigns have had posts removed as "misinformation." Snapchat, with a young audience and a brand-safety approach that let monster STIs through, gave a condom brand reach that Instagram may not have. For sexual-wellness marketers, the lessons are that AI is now a viable way to get **big ideas on small budgets**, and that the right placement can matter as much as the creative.

Five months later, the brand's numbers look good. CEO Michael Porter told Mi3 that Woolworths sales rose 15% during the campaign period compared with a year earlier. Snapchat's Brand Lift Study recorded awareness up 27 points (17% → 44%) and ad recall up 39 points (11% → 50%). The campaign reached 1.5 million people, three-quarters of them aged 16–24, generated 13 million impressions and 125,000 clicks, and drove more than 107,000 site visits. Mi3 puts the cost at about 10 cents per person who remembered the ad and 9 cents per 15-second view. Emotive's Simon Joyce estimates production cost about 10% of an equivalent traditional VFX shoot, which let 90% of working media go to Snapchat. "A brand our size could never have made this," Porter said. "Without AI this campaign doesn't exist."

Joyce also warned that the industry is "overselling ease": the work took months of prompting, refinement and directing. These figures come from the brand and from Snapchat's own lift study, and a year-on-year retail comparison does not isolate the campaign's effect from other factors.

Sources

Update — 2026-10-14

Initial entry — story first created.