In the course of teaching young Eastern Europeans the importance of safe sex in HIV prevention, a group of young agency creatives from Lowe Poland got inspired by the region's primary sex ed source material. If you guessed it came from the country's education system, guess again. "This is a real generalization," says Georgia Arnold, vice-president of public affairs at MTV Networks International, "But a lot of young people in Eastern Europe find out about sex through watching porn."

With that in mind, earlier this year, MTV asked ad agencies to put their best creative heads together for "Turn on TV," a global campaign of TV and web PSAs to support the Global Media AIDS Initiative, which began in 2004 to spread awareness around AIDS-related issues in 76 countries. The spots would be created pro-bono and then offered rights-free to broadcasters worldwide. Lowe Worldwide, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, 180 Amsterdam, Young & Rubicam, WK 12 and Cake happily obliged by producing 26 hilarious, nerve-wracking and risqué spots. "There were no boundaries," says Arnold. "We had no creative control."

The young creatives at Lowe's Polish office parodied low-budget porno flicks in two of the campaign's funniest pieces. In one ad, a busty secretary drops her pen between the legs of a piggish military officer. She bends over, crawls between his legs, retrieves it, returns it and promptly leaves. The slogan: "No condom, no fun."

Stink's Neil Harris directed one of the more harrowing submissions for Ogilvy Lisbon. A series of couples are shown having sex. When they're finished, the man pulls a pistol and shoots the woman. The message: "The fastest growing group of people infected by HIV and AIDS is heterosexual women under 30."

"Turn on TV" is part of MTV's long-running Staying Alive campaign, which has encompassed long-form programs, documentaries and free concerts. Arnold says content from Staying Alive reaches 65% of the world's TV households each year. However, this is the first year MTV reached out to ad agencies. GMAI founding chair and MTV Networks International president Bill Roedy approached WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, who agreed to champion the project to the ad world.

So far, at least 35 broadcasters - including many in Africa - are airing the ads, but Arnold hopes next year's work will be even more culturally-specific. Although the PSAs had to stand up to the UK's tough regulations, ads featuring bare boobs and bottoms are unlikely to pass in developing countries with rigid censorship regimes. "A lot of our viewers watch TV with their parents. We do want to push the envelope, we want to get people talking, but we don't want their parents to pick up the remote and say, 'You can't watch that'," says Arnold. "It's a difficult line to tread.

Staying Alive/Turn on TV www.staying-alive.org/turnont