With over two million views of the video and more than seventy thousand downloads of the app, Rethink’s Your Man Reminder - one of the ten winners of TED Ads Worth Spreading is spreading TLC (Touch, Look, Check) breast awareness all over the world! Read more about the story behind the success of the latest Rethink initiative to go 'viral'!
At Rethink Breast Cancer we like to say that we’ve seen it all when it comes to “boobs” and breast cancer. We have worked with incredible Ad agencies like ZiG, Bensimon Byrne, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, and many more who have presented us with fabulous education campaigns that are often centered around breasts. Makes sense if you think about it.
One of Rethink’s goals is to take the fear out of breast cancer messaging and encourage young women to get involved in the cause, educate themselves and make sure they are breast aware. Young people are a particularly difficult community to reach as they are the target of so much advertising and are constantly bombarded with things to do, buy and see. We are always looking for creative ways to break through the clutter with important information about breast cancer, and “boobs” usually do the trick! When our long time partner agency John St. called us in to hear some fresh ideas they had for a brief we had given them around our Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign, we were ready and willing to hear some “booby” ideas. Imagine our surprise when we heard the name of their campaign idea was “Your Man Reminder”. We were instantly smitten by their idea of using hot men to remind women to be breast aware and were particularly excited by the idea of launching our first smartphone app. John St. is amazingly collaborative, and we worked together to figure out how the Your Man Reminder app would work and ways we could use social media to help spread the word about it.
With so much focus on the app, I have to admit we kind of forgot about the promotional video script that had originally been presented to us. The idea was to bring the “hot man reminder” to life in a video that would serve both as an education tool and drive people to download the app. When our amazing project manager at the time, Katie Gillespie, came to us for script approval for the video both MJ (Rethink’s Executive Director) and I raised our eyebrows. It’s a fine line between using a positive upbeat message for breast awareness and showing respect and recognition of the challenges that many young women in our programs face around the loss of their breasts. We loved the humour and twist that the John St. script was proposing, but we wanted to make sure that the video didn’t offend or hurt anyone. I admit that I was also probably a little prudish about the whole thing! We spoke to A LOT of people and worked closely with John St. to hone the script – for example, Dr. Rutherford wasn’t in the original script - and then we were off to the races. Great casting was key to the success of the video and Katie kindly volunteered to help audition all the hot men (and sent lots of pics to the team back at the office). She also agreed to spend the day on the set. What a devoted team player!
When the day arrived to see the finished product I was really nervous. Would the video convey the fun AND the importance of the messaging and app? Would it seem too silly? Embarrassing? I was a nervous wreck. All my concerns melted away as Dr. Rutherford opened the video and we laughed in all the right places. John St. had nailed it (as always) and we were ready to post it online.
I can’t even remember how the next few days went down as it is all a blur now. Everything happened so fast and the video just took off like it had a life of its own! Our viewership numbers were climbing through the roof and it seemed like everyone was sharing, tweeting, commenting and giving a lot of love to the campaign. Bloggers and media from around the world jumped on the bandwagon and MJ and I did radio, print, TV and online interviews here in Canada and from countries across the Globe. We were particularly thrilled that the campaign was embraced by the gay community and loved their shout outs to Anthony (he was even chosen as “man of the month”!).
The campaign buzz has slowed down but is far from over. We’ve had over 2 million people view the video and over 70,000 have downloaded the app. That’s a lot of women being reminded to target their breasts and show them some TLC!
We are so grateful to everyone who worked on this campaign. We are already brimming with ideas for phase 2 of the app and video. We want to hear more of your feedback and especially any thoughts you might have of where we might go next with this amazing campaign!
- Alison Gordon
VP, Strategy, Marketing & Communications
Rethink Breast Cancer
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