Sometimes to make a great promotional campaign you have to get creative and take a route that seems a little risqué and “out there” to reach your target audience. Polish marketing agency Change Integrated has done just that with a new interactive campaign designed to spread breast cancer awareness on none other than one of the most popular Polish adult websites. Through the campaign, nearly 175,000 men were trained in the art of breast examination and informed of the importance of breast cancer awareness within a single week.
Change Integrated released a video about the campaign. You can click to watch the video on Vimeo, as it is NSFW and the thumbnail image is a little inappropriate, in my humble opinion. But the voiceover in the video explains the idea behind the campaign and why Change Integrated decided to look to porn as a means of spreading breast cancer awareness:
“Most breast cancer campaigns are targeted at female audiences, but the problem also relates to men, as it does concern their partners and wives. Why are we women left alone? Men are not matching to all those conventional leaflets and medical persuasion aimed at women, so how can we educate men on what they can easily do to help? We decided to base our campaign on a cliché, yet true insight—Men are big kids, and they learn best when playing.”
The campaign took the form of an interactive game called “Magic Boobs!”, placed smack dab in the middle of the adult site’s front page. Site visitors were encouraged to try out different methods of breast examination (though they weren’t informed about the fact that they were being trained in breast cancer prevention until the game was over, as you can see in the screenshot below). Men were also provided with a downloadable list of medical centers, where they can send their partners should they find any lumps.
At the end of the first week of the campaign, nearly 175,000 men were trained. According to the Change Integrated video, a traditional offline training of this sort would cost 35 Euros per person, for a total of 6 million Euros! The Change Integrated campaign cost only 1,300 Euros.
Personally, I think that in theory this campaign was a great idea. However, I have to wonder how many of the men that played this interactive boob game were actually paying attention to the fact that they were learning breast examination techniques. However, in any case I think this is an interesting example of a marketing firm taking the road less traveled and pushing boundaries to get their message out through new and interesting channels.
What do you think of the Change Integrated “Magic Boobs!” campaign? Do you think that it degrades the cause of breast cancer awareness or is it the perfect way to get men involved in the cause?
