Coachella Went After a Nonprofit Behind an STD Awareness—and Missed a Big Marketing Opportunity

Even by Southern California standards, the traffic jam created by motorists heading home from the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is notorious. In the hours after the annual concert’s end, tens of thousands of revelers sit bumper to bumper on Interstate 10 as far as 60 miles west of the grounds.

There’s not much to look at on a desert highway in the middle of the night. One exception is a billboard about 15 miles outside the festival grounds, aimed squarely at the twentysomething revelers who’ve just partied for three days straight.

“Catch More Than Vibes?” it asks, followed by a web address: “FreeSTDCheck.org.”

The billboard is the work of the LA-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF.) The nonprofit provides services to those with HIV and, as the billboard makes obvious, also guides people to free city-sponsored testing for other sexually transmitted diseases.

With an assist from ad services firm Billups, AHF has been plastering billboards with safe sex messages around Los Angeles—and Coachella—for years. Most famous: a photo of a banana inside a condom along with the caption “Just Use It.”

But this year is different. Shortly after the “Catch More Than Vibes?” sign appeared in advance of Coachella’s April 12-14 weekend, Billups received a cease-and-desist letter from AEG Presents, the owner of Coachella promoter Goldenvoice.

“They said that it was copyright infringement, but we couldn’t find any copyright that we were infringing on,” AHF’s vice president of marketing and creative Jason Farmer told Adweek.

“We didn’t use their name. We didn’t use their logo. We even made sure to keep the typeface away from the way their typeface looks because we were worried they might bring up something like that.”

The billboard did feature an image of the Coachella grounds as a backdrop, but AHF sourced the photo from stock house Getty and cleared the usage rights.

Adweek received no response to a request for comment from AEG Presents, but there’s no shortage of brands that move quickly, as it did, to protect their intellectual property. In 2023, for example, Chipotle fired off a cease-and-desist to Sweetgreen simply for the salad chain’s using the word chipotle (a variety of chili pepper) in an entrée’s name.

Legalities aside, the dustup raises a separate issue that’s specific to marketing. When companies guard their brands this assiduously, they risk passing up a goodwill opportunity—in essence, a chance for some free advertising.

“You would think that this would be a message that they’d want to get behind—be safe, use a condom, and if you didn’t, get checked on your way out,” said Billups’ global CEO David Krupp.

Petur Workman, a veteran brand and marketing consultant based in LA, agrees. Coachella “should have said, ‘hey, could we have your guys attend? Would you like to have a free booth?’ They should have partnered with [AHF] and embraced this.”

Farmer explained that his group’s billboard isn’t a hit on the festival or its owners, just a message directed toward a demographic known for its concertgoing.

“We look for opportunities where we can impact the people that are most at risk, which is youth 15-24, and be in the right place at the right time,” he said, adding: “It’s Coachella—people are going to be hooking up.”

But that might also be the sticking point. “This is the first year Coachella did not sell out,” said Grace Teng, partner and chief media officer for LA media agency Scale by Zambezi. “My point of view is that Coachella wants a cleaner image focused around music and experience and less about hooking up.”

Meanwhile, the billboard remains in place at press time in anticipation of Coachella’s April 19-21 weekend. Krupp is confident concertgoers will see it. After all, he said, “they’re usually stuck in traffic.”