Taking as its starting point the communication surrounding the risks of HIV transmission through oral-genital sex, this paper examines the rationales and interests that shape the approaches adopted to address such risks in public policy and the media. In this context, it explores the perspectives of professionals in prevention, communication, and the media, as well as those from the nonprofit sector, in relation to the debates among researchers. The analysis presented is based on four types of data: a corpus of documents from campaign organizers (action plans, press kits, budgets, administrative memos, media plans, meeting minutes, evaluation reports, and correspondence); the opinions of stakeholders involved in campaign development, gathered through semi-structured interviews; the opinions of advertisers, nonprofit activists, and social scientists; and an examination of the general and specialized press.