Today I want to talk about boobs.

Yes, boobs. 

And more specifically boobs with cancer. Yes, you heard that right, breast cancer. This is something that an organisation in Argentina focus on trying to help women understand the dangers of breast cancer and how a simple self-check can help with early diagnosis

And now that I have your attention I want to share with you a piece of work that I wish I had done. It was created for MACMA which stands for Movimiento Ayuda Cancer de Mama and they are based in Argentina. 

MACMA is a clinic focused on tackling the horrible C word, and more specifically breast cancer.

MACMA had a challenge and that challenge was to spread the word on the importance of self-breast examinations and how to perform them in and around the Breast Cancer awareness month of October. 

Pretty simple brief right. Show woman how to perform a self-check.

But for years all we have ever seen were diagrams after diagram on how to do this and every now and then some pretty clever ideas around how to spread the word on the subject. But nothing really stood out, broke the mould or really made people talk about it.

Until they did this.

What I love about this piece of work they created is that it not only got the message across to millions of people overnight, it tackled a bigger issue around censorship on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

And as you know, showing any nipple, specifically, a female nipple on Facebook or Instagram is frowned upon and immediately removed. However male nipples are ok. And this is where the genius comes in with this idea. 

Boobs, not ok. 

Man boobs, ok.

Introducing Henry, who has pretty impressive Man Boobs. Then they used a woman’s hands to perform and demonstrate the correct way to do a self-breast examination in a very simple, no-frills video that they released onto all the social platforms that would generally censor this if it were a females breasts.

As you can imagine this video exploded, not only was the idea fresh, the execution was simple and the use of Man Boobs combined with female hands and narrative made this memorable.

Overnight this became a hit with over 48 million views, 700k shares and ultimately being picked up by every news channel on the planet to spread the word even further which resulted in over $17m of earned media. To date this is the most shared video on the subject and #manboobsforboobs is entrenched in peoples minds all over the world.

Now every time I look in the mirror staring at my man boobs, I can’t help thinking “I wish I had done that”

Gary