NEW PROBLEM

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in younger people, accounting for 30% of all incidences in 18-39-year-olds. However, most do not consider themselves at risk. Furthermore, last year, Breast Cancer Now estimated that nearly one million British women missed mammograms due to screening programmes being paused.

Young people (18-39-year-olds) do not spend much time thinking or talking about breast cancer. Although they confront difficult topics such as body image and gender equality, breast cancer remains one that is most ignored.

Stella McCartney Cares Pink Foundation, a platform dedicated to the prevention and early detection and treatment of breast cancer, needed a campaign that created mass behaviour change amongst this younger audience.

NEW IDEA

The Strategy

We tapped into our cultural analysts and strategy team to deeply immerse ourselves into the target audience and gain a greater understanding of what it was about breast cancer that needed to be challenged. 

Our extensive research identified a consistent theme across our target audience. Breast Cancer came with a powerful sense of fear attached to it, which resulted in people feeling less likely to face the issue by either talking about it or checking themselves. This feeling is also not helped by pretty much all cancer communications coming from a place that feels deadly serious, making the topic feel almost untouchable. 

We needed to de-dramatise breast cancer. Take a fresh look at how we could get a younger audience to sit up and take notice of breast cancer but also not be paralysed with fear when it comes to regularly checking their breasts.

Taking insight straight from Stella herself, she said, “humour makes the messaging easier to digest”. Through a rigorous testing process we identified that by taking a fresh perspective on breast cancer communications we could use humour to make a younger generation feel more comfortable about the subject, and successfully slide the concept of regularly checking your breasts right into culture.

The Creative

We knew that if we were going to create impact at a scale that made meaningful change, we had to insert our message right into the heart of culture. 

We developed an idea that paired Stella McCartney with one of our clients, Netflix. We identified the show Sex Education as a perfect route to market for this message, a show known for breaking down barriers with difficult subjects in an entertaining way to reach our target audience, we had two culturally strong brands ready to go against cancer communication conventions. 

Stella McCartney teased the campaign at London Fashion Week, launching a limited edition pale blue organic T-shirt complete with a front and back logo made with a heat-reactive dye that turned pink when touched to cheekily remind women to examine their breasts. The platform ‘Toilet, Teeth, Tits’ was born.

A catchy phrase and routine that could be used to remind our target audience to ‘check their tits’ when they wake up in the morning. Leaning on the power of three and taking inspiration from famous and effective government messaging such as ‘catch it kill it bin it’ or more recently some of the Covid-19 messaging around ‘hands, face, space’.

We quickly followed the campaign up with a hero film to mark the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Featuring the cast of Mooredale High talking about the catchy platform that we had developed. The film featured all the show’s familiar cast members going through the ‘Triple T’ routine, using humour to dispel laughable myths about the disease whilst inspiring young people to integrate daily self-checking into their routine. Even Stella made her own cameo appearance.

Whilst we had the creative freedom to develop this concept, we also wanted to make sure the script was in line with how the characters normally speak and interact. To ensure we were staying true to each of the cast’s characters, we worked with the show runners and scriptwriters to develop the perfect script.

The supporting campaign was rolled out over multiple-channels including OOH, digital and social media - utilising the high profile cast to amplify our message by sharing and reposting the content. With major A-list celebrities such as Kylie Minogue and Charlie Theron getting behind the campaign (and the t-shirt) on their own personal social media channels.

The campaign also created a huge buzz in more traditional broadcast channels, featured across some of the world’s most major outdoor sites such Times Square in New York for a two week period during Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Furthermore, the campaign went viral in the media - being picked up by everyone from Vogue to The Telegraph.

NEW GROWTH

We reached 13.1 million people, earned 185 global media placements, saw 3 million impressions for the earned media placement in New York’s Times Square, and had over 2.6 million views of the film. The content was also shared by the likes of Charlize Theron and Kylie Minogue.

This was Stella McCartney’s seventh BCA campaign and ACNE’s first, and through its reach, our campaign became number one for engagement ever received on Stella McCartney’s Instagram page demonstrating the success of Triple T in communicating the important messaging of BCA.

Many of the audience viewing it on social media thought it was a missing scene from the show and we were able to capitalise from the conversation around the launch of Sex Education S3. It sparked wide conversation on social media, with people sharing their own breast cancer stories and tagging in friends and family to take note. It landed even more cultural relevance through relevant influencers and credible fashion press support.

Press sentiment was incredibly positive with publications applauding the collaboration, such as Vogue UK calling it a “match made in heaven”.

The campaign has since won numerous creative awards across the world and continues to be nominated.