AIDES: Parfois, on peut mentir sans le savoir

Pinocchio becomes a real boy at the end of the famous fable, but what if he stayed a wooden puppet? And what if he grew up in modern-day Europe? 

A French AIDS-awareness charity thought this through, and the result is a provocative ad that gets away with a lot more sex than Americans are used to seeing in commercials. Watch "Woody," as the character is known, go for a one-night stand that ends on a foreboding note. There's no actual nudity, but the simulation of sexual activity might be a no-go at your place of work: 

Woody's double-entendre lengthened nose reveals that it is not actually okay that he doesn't have condoms, and the ad's punchline is that such a situation is never acceptable. 

The agency TBWA\France produced the spot with Control Films, the production company also responsible for that American Psycho spoof for Kanye West's album earlier this year. The Woody costume was made of foam and took four to six hours to apply each time. 

The creative team went into the project wanting to find a unique way to make singles aware of the fact that there is an estimated 650,000 HIV-positive European citizens unaware of their virus. 

The awareness group behind the ad is AIDES, founded by Daniel Defert, former partner of the renowned, late philosopher Michel Foucault (the most-cited man in the humanities). Defert established the organization in 1984, after Foucault died of AIDS. (Ver)