Condom wars: Brand rivalry during the 1980s AIDS rubber rush
Examination of the reshaping of the British condom market during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
This seminar examines the reshaping of the British condom market during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Its target audience is students and staff interested in the history of AIDS and sexual health, as well as the broader histories of health product advertising and consumerism in the 21st Century.
This presentation examines the intense brand rivalry that reshaped the British condom market during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. It characterises this period as a “rubber rush”, as rising demand and regulatory change opened space for new entrants and aggressive competition. At the same time, condoms acquired a new significance within sexual-health promotion.
For much of the twentieth century, condom advertising in Britain operated within tight legal, cultural and broadcasting restrictions, while Durex held an overwhelmingly dominant market position. However, the AIDS crisis disrupted this. Early safer-sex messaging emerged from gay communities, while new and expanding brands, including Red Stripe, Jiffy, Lifestyles and Richard Branson’s Mates, challenged both Durex and established conventions of condom promotion. Some targeted younger consumers and used celebrity endorsement, while others widened distribution, leaned on humour or charitable association, and spoke more explicitly about disease prevention.
The paper draws on archival records and campaign materials alongside advertising trade, mainstream and gay press. It gives particular attention to 1987, when evidence supporting condoms as protection against HIV coincided with the lifting of the television advertising ban. This allowed competition between Durex and Mates to extend onto television and, controversially, to the BBC, which broadcast unbranded versions of Mates advertisements as public-health films.
Using the commercial determinants of health as a historical lens, the paper argues that condom normalisation emerged from shifting relationships between commercial firms and a wider network spanning activism, broadcasting, regulation, charity and public health. Their interests sometimes conflicted, but could also temporarily align.
Speaker
Dr David Rowe
David Rowe is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of York’s School for Business and Society. His research explores the societal impact of marketing and consumption, particularly in relation to public health, sexual health and socio-political change. He specialises in qualitative and historical approaches to advertising, marketing communications and consumer behaviour. David completed an AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the History of Advertising Trust, examining the marketing and advertising of sexual health in twentieth-century Britain. His work has been published in Sociology; Gender, Work & Organization; Marketing Theory; Advances in Consumer Research; and The Conversation. He has also contributed chapters to Routledge-edited collections, including Sexuality in Marketing and Consumption and Rituals, Consumption, and Marketing.
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