Currently, a special provision in federal law requires states to take active measures against statutory rape. Any state that accepts welfare funds from the Administration for Children and Families (and all 50 states do) must submit a plan that establishes numerical goals to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies and births. The "Isn't she a little young?" campaign is part of Virginia's federally mandated plan to tackle the statutory rape issue.

The blueprint for this campaign was a pilot project conducted by the health department last year in the Tidewater region on the eastern edge of Virginia. (Tidewater is home to numerous military bases, including the world's largest naval base, in Norfolk.) According to Franklin, 46 percent of men interviewed after the campaign ran remembered seeing the campaign slogan ("Isn't she a little young?") somewhere.

For a campaign intended to catch the attention of libidinous men in their 20s, the images in the billboards and bar materials are noticeably chaste -- as likely to be advertising insurance services as notions of propriety. Odor says this wasn't always the case. In fact, the original ideas proposed by the American Institutes for Research, the agency that created the campaign, were much spicier and featured pictures of seductive young women. "Sex sells, so that was the first thing that came out of American Institutes for Research," Odor says. (The AIR is prohibited by contract from talking publicly about the campaign.)

But the Virginia Department of Health felt such ads would be perpetuating the objectification of women. "We had to put a stop to that from a philosophical perspective," Odor says. Plus, when prototypes of the ads with women's faces were tested in focus groups, the men often ended up debating "whether or not she looks old enough to consent," Odor says. Instead, the agency decided to go with the simple lettering and shadowy silhouettes that crop up alongside Virginia highways today.

"It's a very innovative take on this issue," says Kristina Vadas, the sexual assault outreach counselor at Richmond's YWCA. "Most statutory rape programs target young girls, and say, 'Here are ways to protect yourself.' They put the responsibility on young people to resist adults. I think that going to the root of the problem -- adults who are preying on young teens-- is a much more appropriate way to go about it."

Not everyone believes in the campaign as much as Vadas. "The overall message over this campaign is that sex with a minor is against the law, and I'm not sure that's what drives men to be or not to be with women," says Adrienne Verrilli, director of communications at SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. "There are a lot of other factors that contribute to a relationship between an underage woman and an older man."

Jamie Shuttleworth, a director of account planning at advertising agency Foote Cone Belding -- who has extensive experience with male-targeted campaigns for brands like Coors and John Deere -- worries that using a threatening tone in an ad (like the one taken by the "Don't go there" campaign) might be alienating. "The logical human reaction is to say, 'That doesn't apply to me.' It may get the point across, but it may also be easy to dismiss," Shuttleworth says.

And the "Don't go there" creators are already fighting an uphill battle, says Benjamin. "People's behaviors don't change very easily," he says. "The biggest problem with public health campaigns is that they aren't usually adequately financed. You can't get these kinds of ads into prime time. It is difficult to be competitive with the consumer advertising community because of the amount of money they have compared to the amount of money we have."

They're still going to try, Franklin says. "Sure, one billboard isn't gonna work -- people see something like 30,000 sexually explicit images a day or a week, and here I am throwing up one message to counter that. But we've got to start somewhere."

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