With Oct. 15 marking National Latino AIDS Awareness Day, the time is “Ahorita Mismo" (Right Now!) to push for HIV prevention education in Hispanic and Latino communities, as Gilead Sciences expresses in its new campaign.
The latest offshoot of Gilead's Care for the Culture initiative, the company's Ahora Mismo campaign targets Latino communities through trusted voices and culturally significant humor, a lane that's emerging as one right up Gilead’s alley.
“While significant progress has been made in HIV prevention, gaps in awareness, stigma and access to information continue to impact many communities—including and especially Latino communities,” Gilead’s VP of marketing and U.S. prevention Ashley Gildea commented in an emailed statement. “Ahorita Mismo—meaning ‘right now’—is a call to action rooted in the belief that timely information can help people make informed decisions about their health.”
"Through culturally grounded storytelling and community-centered engagement, this campaign seeks to elevate awareness of HIV testing and prevention options, spark meaningful conversations, and help ensure the Latino community has the information and support they need to take the next step toward protecting their health," Gildea said.
The company’s minute-long “Ahorita Ghosted” spot, one of three that goes with the campaign, stars popular digital creators Eric Sedeño and Boman Martinez-Reid, the latter of whom will soon be seen in a Scottish castle in an upcoming season of Peacock’s hit reality show “The Traitors.”
In the video, a retro display with a funky font and a catchy, Latin music-inspired background tune welcomes viewers to “1-800-Ahorita,” where “dating advance and HIV prevention get real” through fictional calls that speak to real-life situations. Sedeño and Martinez-Reid sit across each other in a comfy, realistic living room set under a neon “1-800-Ahorita” sign. After an unsuccessful round of rock paper scissors, the phone rings with their first caller, who shares the story of a man who “straight-up ghosted” him.
The potential reason for the ghost is soon revealed, and it’s not “accidentally liking one of his posts from 2019,” as Sedeño initially suggests. The man on the phone expresses that all he did was ask if his partner had been tested for HIV, a situation that Martinez-Reid maintains is “still salvageable.” Sedeño asks if the caller himself has been tested, which he was planning to “ahorita” (right now).
“Don’t ghost your sexual health,” Sedeño says in the video. “The impact of HIV continues to affect the Latino community.”
“A conversation with your healthcare provider about getting tested and learning your HIV prevention options can go a long way,” Martinez-Reid adds, to which Sedeño agrees.
“Our health is something we should take care of ahorita mismo,” he says. The duo has successfully reassured the caller, leaving the two to end the ad with a jokey exchange and a silly montage of the friends posing in the living room set as a voiceover directs viewers to Gilead's Care for the Culture website.
Throughout the video, Sedeño and Martinez-Reid seamlessly slip in references familiar to the Latino community such as Sedeño calling the caller “corazón,” a common Spanish term of endearment. The digital creators repeat a similar song and dance in "Ahorita Eggplant" and "Ahorita Throuple," in which they encourage other callers who reach out with sticky dating situations to meet with a healthcare provider to discuss their HIV status.
Black and Hispanic communities both experience a greater HIV burden, according to Gilead and Emory University’s AIDSVu. In 2024, Hispanic/Latino individuals represented 34% of all new HIV diagnoses in the U.S., despite making up only 19% of the population, and had an HIV prevalence rate that was more than three times higher than for white individuals.
Care for the Culture looks to emphasize the importance of HIV prevention across these communities, reminding its audience that “HIV is not somewhere else. It’s right here,” the website says, noting that seven out of every ten estimated new HIV infections occurred within Black and Latino communities as of 2022.
In Care for the Culture’s efforts to strike up conversations around HIV and destigmatize testing and prevention, Gilead previously used the power of music and renowned R&B singer TLC’s Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins in “So We PrEP,” a remix of TLC’s 1994 hit “Creep.”
More recently, Gilead has looked to reach Black communities through other Care for the Culture initiatives such as its “Up to Date” campaign, which saw comedian and podcast host Nicole Byers using culturally relevant language and humor to spread HIV education in a spot that also included “Saturday Night Live” alum Devon Walker.
Both “Up to Date” and “Ahorita” include storylines and verbiage that are relatable to modern dating and sexual culture, such as the late-night hook-up depicted in “Up to Date” or the ghosting conundrum in “Ahorita.” The topical tropes speak to Gilead’s evolving messaging around HIV as the company moves beyond scientific-focused content to centering “authenticity” and directness, executive director of public affairs, U.S. advocacy and health equity Deborah Wafer explained in a July interview with Fierce.
“We need to be more direct and talk about sex and talk about prevention of HIV,” Wafer said, with one way to do so being through “the right language,” that younger generations can pick up on.
As the maker of the first-ever pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) option back in 2012, Gilead has been at the forefront of HIV prevention and, in turn, HIV drug marketing since the beginning. The company’s collection of HIV products includes top-selling treatment Biktarvy, daily PrEP Descovy and most recently long-acting PrEP injection Yeztugo. In 2025, Gilead picked up $20.8 billion in HIV-specific sales, a 6% jump from 2024.