Using advertisements to create demand for voluntary medical male circumcision in South Africa

The intervention consisted of distributing postcards with a compensation offer, information on a possibly unknown benefit of VMMC and/or a framing message to households in Soweto, South Africa. Results show that a modest compensation offer conditioned on VMMC consultation increased take-up of the VMMC procedure. Adding a challenge, ‘Are you tough enough?’ to the basic postcard also increased take-up of the VMMC procedure. In contrast to the compensation and the challenge posed, there was no statistically significant effect of providing information about a possible unknown benefit of VMMC on its take-up.