2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Ford Motor Company has been active in the fight against breast cancer since 1993, and, in 2006, intensified its efforts with the launch of its Warriors in Pink campaign. Warriors in Pink is designed to raise funds to support research and education, and to raise awareness. Through encouraging early detection, Warriors in Pink hopes to increase survival rates. The campaign is accompanied by a clothing line, from which 100% of sales revenue is donated to breast cancer charities. Regionally, there has long been a stigma associated with cancer, which means that, in many cases, sufferers are not diagnosed until the later stages of the disease. To try and change the attitudes towards cancer in the Middle East, the agency launched and localised the CSR campaign in the region in 2011 and has continued with a sustained communications programme for the last four years. Building on the success of previous years, the Agency developed and executed a new strategy in 2015 focused on social media influencers and school children. The Do it For Me Mom campaign, which took place in secondary schools in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Qatar and Jordan, was designed to teach children the importance of early detection in the hope that they will share these insights with their mothers and encourage them to screen themselves. The second pillar of the strategy targeted social media influencers by asking them to join the fight against breast cancer through the promotion of the #Iamawarrior hashtag and a pair of pink boxing gloves.

The Brief

While awareness initiatives have increased across the region, there is still a need to address the matter of educating women and the community about breast cancer, so that they are fully aware of the need to screen often and, most importantly understand that can be a curable disease when detected early. With the launch of the Warriors in Pink campaign, Ford Middle East is raising awareness across all stakeholder groups – from mums and school children to social media influencers – by encouraging them to spread the message about the importance of early detection and dispel the stigma associated with cancer.

Execution

Building on the success of previous years, the Agency developed a two-pronged sustained programme of activities across the MENA region in 2015 to target social media influencers and schools. The Agency launched a schools campaign called “Do it for me mom”, which saw healthcare experts go into secondary schools in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Qatar to teach children age 13-14-years old the importance of early detection, with the hope they share their experiences with their mums when they return home. The second stream of the strategy focused on social media influencers across the Arab world in a campaign entitled #Iamawarrior. The activation centered on pink boxing gloves, which were sent to influencers across the region, who were encouraged to share photos of themselves wearing the gloves and essentially join the campaign to “beat” breast cancer together.

The social media campaign was an instant success, generating: • 263914 interactions on Instagram • 556 pictures posted on Instagram • 18306 “Likes “ on Facebook • 13000 video views on Facebook • 1,707,848 impressions on Twitter • 1,013,355 accounts reached on Twitter • Overall, the 2015 programme reached over 30 million people across the Arab world.

The Strategy

Warriors in Pink’s strategy is to launch and maintain a long term breast cancer awareness and early detection programme across the Middle East, localising the campaign already established across North America and Canada. Through their stories and advice, Ford Middle East’s Warriors in Pink are designed to encourage men, women and children to talk about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.