2009 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

Unsurprisingly, some magazines were still too scared to run the stories. Those that did publish the stories started a vigorous debate in the media. Which is what we wanted. Had it not caused some controversy and brought the subject out into the open, it would have failed. Instead, happily, it caused a stir and the website had a large number of hits. The overall campaign, of which this was one part, gained a total of 1,937,337 media impressions and US $65 920 worth of free media space.

Creative Execution

So what did we choose to do? We designed Ads that aren’t traditional ads. We got creative about the media, and designed the campaign as stories in popular women’s magazines. That way, women read the stories of other women discussing their hopes, fears and experiences about their breasts, and their scares with breast cancer. This educated women and told them where they could get more answers (from the website that formed another part of the campaign), all without causing offence or making them embarrassed. An absolute must in this region. Each story was art directed to fit into the editorial style of the magazine, from an arthouse, to youth and general women’s magazines.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In The Middle East, breasts are a taboo subject, and speaking about cancer outside the family home, is equally as taboo. So breast cancer is obviously a very difficult topic to broach with women in the region. A region that consequently has an unacceptably high number of deaths from undiagnosed breast cancer. When Breast Cancer Awareness month came around we had the opportunity to talk to women, but we had to find a clever way to do it. We couldn’t shout at them or try to scare them with a brash campaign.