While knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases is high in Sweden, a frighteningly low percentage of Swedish young adults actually believe condoms are necessary when having casual sex. Consequently, over the last two years, the infection rate for sexually transmitted diseases has increased by 20%, and HIV by 12% across the country.

Sweden’s National HIV council felt that it needed to take action and change the attitudes regarding condom use and thus decrease the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. It was clear that traditional methods using scare tactics with STD statistics was not going to be effective. Instead they turned to Starcom to help them come up with an original, honest and effective way to convince young adults that protection was important.

Starcom’s solution? The web application, SHAG TREE, was created. Essentially, users log into the application via Facebook connect and enter how many sexual partners they have has. The application generates a tree out of pictures of your Facebook friends and their friends to illustrate how many people you have statistically and potentially had sex with through them. The creation of the SHAG TREE created a huge media frenzy, bringing even more awareness to the HIV council’s cause. Results of what the young Swedes were now discussing online showed that the campaign was a highly effective.

To learn more about this personal but highly effective web app check out the video below the fold. As a warning, it’s a bit NSFW.