Erin Miller

New York City celebrated Valentine’s Day by releasing its new condom design.

The old version is on the left and the new one is on the right.
The original NYC condom used letters similar to those of the subway markers to create brand recognition, but apparently MTA (Metropolitan Transport Authority) was picky about how and where the condoms could be advertised because they didn’t want to confuse a poor tourist who might accidentally mistake a condom for a subway stop. So, the city department of public health redesigned its brand to look slightly less like the markers. The guy behind one laptop per child is responsible for the new look. The actual condom, a premium lubricated Lifestyles latex condom is unchanged. The city department of public health increased the number of condoms distributed in the city from 250,000 to 1.5 million per month when it introduced public condom requesting online. (i.e. any business owner can request condoms via the web to be brought to his establishment within ten days.) Creating the first NYC brand condom on Valentine’s Day 2007, doubled that number to 3 million condoms per month — which, in a city of 8 million people all included, isn’t half bad. Hopefully the new look and advertisements further increase the numbers.
Check out the ads. I like the latin one and the jazz one.
And just for fun, here is Spot’s Valentine’s Day picture, with her new Valentine’s Day present.