Since April 2014 Instagram has been refusing to post photos with exposed female breasts. Everyone has adjusted to cover intimate parts with stickers, graphics and emojis. For the first time Instagram’s censorship became a new media to spread a breast cancer prevention message. We created an Instagram campaign: Censorship For Cancer. We asked all women to censor their photos with the waving hand emoji and add #TouchThem to say how important early detection is.
Execution
The campaign was implemented in a simple and clear manner. Before launching the operation we created a profile on Instagram: @censorshipforcancer
On March 1, the international month dedicated to women, major photographers (Giampaolo Sgura, Richard Kern, Emanuele Ferrari, Larsen Sotelo, Andrew Kuykendall), instagrammers and celebrities (Sita Bellan, Justine Mattera, Valentina Giorgia Pegorer) posted a photo on Instagram with the waving hand emoji and added #TouchThem to say how important early detection is. A link in the description sent users to censorshipforcancer.com, which explained the point of the operation, showed how to do self-palpation (video tutorial) and encouraged all women to take part in the initiative by using a tool that censors photos with the waving hand emoji.
After a few days, the campaign became a viral message, generating 38M impressions, €1,1M in free earned media and reaching audiences of 32M • 84 countries participated • Top-tier online media coverage: Huffington Post, ELLE, GQ, Playboy, Vanity Fair • +150,000 likes just on Instagram • The campaign was supported by worldwide fashion photographers, famous instagramers and celebrities around the world with zero paid media support • 100% user-generated content
The Situation
There are many organizations fighting breast cancer in Italy. The ANT (National Cancer Foundation) is not very well known. We needed a highly innovative campaign to get the association known and build a relationship of trust with people.
The Strategy
Around 31,000 breast cancers a year are diagnosed in Italy, the rate being higher in the north of the country. In the last few years the figure has risen 13% for women in general and as much as 28% in women under 45. Self-palpation is a very important method of prevention. How to communicate this though? Merely publishing a video tutorial wasn’t eye-catching enough. To get women’s attention we had to use an engaging medium. So we decided to do it on a social network perfect for conveying our message: Instagram. Many great photographers and celebrities have joined the campaign on a voluntary basis. But above all we managed to capture the attention of thousands of women who shared the campaign and uploaded thousands of photos with the hashtag #TouchThem. The operation generated an extraordinary amount of traffic on the website, censorshipforcancer.com, and with record “time spent on site” figures.