How to educate men about testicular cancer.
What I learned while making a PSA for men about testicular cancer.
I recently had the chance to work with the Canadian Cancer Society. The goal was to develop content that would raise awareness and educate men between the ages of 15-29 about testicular cancer—more importantly, how to detect signs and symptoms of the disease.
The organization had been unhappy with concepts presented by others, and had sent them back to the drawing board. It was here that myself, and two uniquely talented videographers, conceived the idea for the PSA that we eventually launched. It’s called “Nutiquette: A Dude’s Guide to Checking his Nuts”.
I wanted to share what made this concept successful, because I think it’s important to share wins like this. It was a hard topic to translate to an audience that might not necessarily feel comfortable discussing with their peers, and I think it’s a small step in the right direction on the different ways we need to engage audiences.
Here are the hard facts, found on Cancer.ca:
Between 1992 and 2005, testicular cancer made up 24% of new cancer cases in men aged 15–29. Between 2006 and 2008, the testicular cancer survival rate was 97%. The earlier the cancer is found, the better the chances of successful treatment.
The Challenge
The challenge to create something that was compelling and would spread the word was tough. The demographic I needed to target was a new one for the organization—most efforts had been geared toward women and breast cancer. They’d never directed efforts to males before, and I was tasked with creating content for an audience that could make or break reputations if it wasn’t sincere.
I think the biggest challenge was getting males to talk about an issue that is socially awkward. It’s not really bar talk, and dispelling the weirdness around subject matter like this could provide a preventative force to a common disease.
The Execution
- Made the idea as simple as possible
Get the message across with a clear call-to-action to learn more if necessary—simplify the audience action to two movements: watch, and share.
When you finish watching the minute-and-a-half video, you are encouraged to click-through and learn more about the disease on the Canadian Cancer Society’s website. The simple annotations feature on YouTube is what makes this possible—and it’s a great way to extend an experience when the content is over. - Utilized a content format that our target would appreciate
Videos are simple because it requires passive engagement to enjoy them—however, we had to ensure it was compelling enough for our audience to keep watching after the first five seconds. It’s a gamble, but there are a number of ways it paid off. Which leads me to my next point. - Added some humour
Humour isn’t the best way to achieve everything, especially with subject matter like Cancer. It can come off as insensitive, cold, and insulting to those who have suffered from the disease. We had to be very careful that the humour being displayed was tasteful and did not overpower the educational message being presented.
We knew that the target demographic of males would be attentive to humour, because it would ultimately break down some of the awkwardness males face when talking about medical issues like testicular cancer. - Leveraged music as a memory device
I knew we needed the video piece to really stick with audiences, so I suggested creating a jingle type song that people would remember after watching the video. I’m good at writing annoying melodies that never leave your head, so I went to work writing the song that makes up the entire video. It took me about 5 hours in total.
What helped to sell this with the Canadian Cancer Society was a rough demo version of the song so they could hear and visualize what the concept would look like for approval. I got other members on my team to help out with animal sounds, background noises, and vocals using garage band.
Agencies are often hesitant to put a concept in front of the client with a rough mock before any approvals—and I think this really helped the client understand where I was coming from, rather than trying to connect with an idea on a Power Point presentation.They could hear the audio, and the nature of the lyrics helped visualize elements of the video we wanted to create. - Created content that entertained, educated, and empowered
This is my mantra for good engagement. Good content should do one, two, or all three of the following: it can entertain the audience, educate the audience, and ultimately empower them to make a choice, decision, or action.
The video entertained audiences with its humour, music, and visuals. It educated audiences on some simple everyday things men can do to check for signs of testicular cancer. And finally, it empowered them to learn more and pass the content on to other males and extend awareness. - Developed a grassroots social media outreach strategy that connected with the right people
Budgets were really, and I mean really tight to promote the video. You could say there was no budget. My challenge here was to promote the video in an organic way, without and paid support or advertising to push the video. That being said, the organization was very aware of how grassroots of an effort our outreach would have to be.
We tapped into the Canadian Cancer Society’s huge partner base—people, companies, survivors, celebrities, broadcast media—and developed tactics and messaging that could reach them directly and indirectly. This included ways to leverage Twitter by reaching out to them with @ mentions, or encouraging the CCS audience on social to bombard these personalities with encouragement to share the video, and a hashtag to support the video. These were people already passionate about the fight against cancer, and I knew tapping them would be efficient and effective and much more practical than throwing money at media.
Broadcast media from across the country—British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Maritimes—featured the video on television and radio. Key sports commentators from TSN tweeted the video; participants from Canada’s first Big Brother talked about it; Toronto Public Health mentioned it. #Nutiquette was being used on Twitter, and it was a great way to track the various conversations lighting up online.
It made The Globe and Mail
André Picard, the Globe and Mail’s health writer, and a prominent health policy writer in the country, tweeted the video and wrote about it—this was a huge win for me. He’s the holy grail of health writers in the country, and people pay attention to him. He was critical of the concept, but it was a step in the right direction to foster some type of discussion.
His piece stood out to me because it displayed the infancy of the men’s cancer movement on a whole, but it also brought forward the constant fight we face to legitimize which disease is more important to any gender. André makes many comparisons to the breast cancer movement, and points out that hysteria and fear are terrible recipes to engage an audience. I agree with André, and I firmly believe that Nutiquette did neither of those things. I’ve always felt that fear mongering is a lazy tactic to grab attention.
I applaud and respect him for applying a critical perspective on the campaign and its objectives. My industry decided to bicker about how a PR shop was taking away creative chops from advertising with a campaign like this—but André shined a perspective that was larger than all of us.
About 960 men will be diagnosed with testicular cancer this year. Next year that number could grow or decrease. It depends on a multitude of factors, and that includes a continued dialogue that can build off of the momentum created by this campaign.
I’m grateful for the many people that helped propel this video further than I could have imagined. My parents have never quite understood what I do for a living, and this project helped them understand what it is I get to do—when my mother saw it in The Globe, and saw news clips on Global television, she turned to me and said “This is huge.”
I don’t work for CCS anymore, but I hope they build from this and push it further. We need to educate more people. We need to share knowledge like this so real issues can gain better awareness.
