With Flavors Like Coffee and Mint, DKT Promotes Fun Condom Use

World AIDS Day reminds us that 35.3 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide, making condom availability, affordability and attractiveness more important than ever. DKT International promotes condom use as a lifestyle with fun and healthy sexual imagery that engages consumers to enhance the sexual experience while ensuring safety.

"We play a significant role in promoting fun and pleasurable safe sex in the 20 countries we serve by offering culturally specific flavored and colored condoms and by encouraging their use through social marketing via the Internet, in concert programs, in advertising, and through promotions at festivals," said Chris Purdy, president of DKT International.

In Brazil, DKT has sold more than one billion condoms and brought to market the first condoms with the color, flavor and aroma of Brazil's national sugar-cane and fruit-flavored cocktail, caipirinha.

Other nation-specific flavors include coffee in Ethiopia and durian in Indonesia. The latter is a fruit known for its pungent aroma, but considered an aphrodisiac locally. In Nigeria, a black-colored condom was recently introduced and is stirring great interest.

In Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country of 230 million, the "Fiesta" condom brand successfully uses Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to talk about safe sex and condom use in uninhibited ways -- like a video of a couple on a motorcycle riding along the road that pans back to reveal that the bumps are large dots on a condom. The tagline: "Safety Can Be Fun." DKT Indonesia offers strawberry, mint and banana condoms in a 12-piece "Party Pack."

Flavored and colored condoms in interesting packaging are designed to attract use among young people, as are promotions on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with uninhibited messages about safe sex that have taglines like: 'Safety Can Be Fun" and "Be Cool and Be Responsible."

In Ethiopia, DKT's "Wise-Up" condom promotions target at-risk groups to protect against HIV/AIDs and STDs, especially among "bridging" populations that spread infection to the general population.

DKT International monitors its efforts to promote safe sex among couples by tracking sales. In 2014 DKT will sell more than 500 million condoms, protecting missions of couples in Brazil, China, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam and Turkey.