Prevent Breast Cancer
Campaign: Healthcare
A campaign to persuade more women to go to their breast screening.
Prevent Breast Cancer is a UK based charity committed solely to predicting and preventing breast cancer. Unlike any other cancer charity, Prevent’s dedication focuses on preventing further generations from ever being diagnosed.
Breast cancer is un-mistakingly the biggest and most common cause of death for women aged between 35-49 in the UK, with 1 in 10 diagnosis happening far too late.
UK breast cancer rates in women have increased by 24% since the 1990s. Incidence rates for breast cancer are projected to rise by 2% in the UK between 2014 and 2035, to 210 cases per 100,000 females by 2035.
So hearing those statistics, why aren’t more women getting screened? Or at the very least, why aren’t more women doing more tests at home? Well the answer was simple… Fear. Just like the statistics above are terrifying, just as terrifying is the dread of the results and the impending diagnosis, so ultimately most women elect simply for the “out of sight and out of mind” philosophy.
Equipped with this knowledge, Prevent Breast Cancer tasked us to convince more women to attend their breast screenings when they first received a letter, in order to lower the percentage of late diagnosis’ enabling treatment to be started earlier and ultimately, allowing women to live a longer, fear free life.
We spoke to women within the age bracket to ask: what’s stopping them?
My team mate Oktawia had much more success than I did when conducting these interviews as one thing I realised is that most women don’t really want to talk about their breasts to a some boyish looking university student.
My team mate Oktawia had much more success than I did when conducting these interviews as one thing I realised is that most women don’t really want to talk about their breasts to a some boyish looking university student.
Anyway, we found that there were a few factors that stopped women from going to their screening. One, time. Two, fear and three, a question that almost every person asked: Does it hurt?
From there Oktawia and myself constructed a campaign based around the notion taking away fear away and giving our audience something to smile about. We wanted to do this while answering the concerns and correcting misconceptions of the screening process.
Our project used punny headline humour to remind women to attend their first breast screening in a much more light hearted and fun way, while the body copy acted to inform the viewer, correcting those previously discussed common misconceptions.
They “first year” we chose to run the campaign through supermarkets, using the natural pathway of shopping to drop in little cheeky reminders to make time for the most important items you can scan.
Adding to the pun inspired nature of the campaign, the visual languages reinforced the messaging by utilising visual prompts of you guessed it, breasts, based off of items and phrases commonly seen and heard around a supermarket.
The long-term plan being a location based campaign, that moved each year, with each new season starting at the beginning of breast cancer awareness month.
This campaign, as well as others across the class, was pitched to the marketing team at Prevent Breast Cancer, as part of our final year design module, with our project scoring gold, winning us an ASOS gift voucher and the potential of having our project eventually go live.
The second (and arguably the most important) part of our campaign victory fell through and the campaign never went live. Fast forward a year, and the massive supermarket brand ASDA teamed up with a Leeds based design agency (who I won’t name) who pitched them the exact same Idea.
“Their” campaign went live as part of Asda’s “Tickled Pink” charity and was met with praise, admiration and awards… Go Figure.
Client: Prevent Breast Cancer
Sector: Charity & Not-for-Profit
Discipline: Campaign
Design Team: Ya’Qub Mir, Oktawia Andrys
Placement: University of Bolton/Bolton School of the Arts.
Sector: Charity & Not-for-Profit
Discipline: Campaign
Design Team: Ya’Qub Mir, Oktawia Andrys
Placement: University of Bolton/Bolton School of the Arts.