LOUD has launched their first campaign for bowel cancer screening after winning the account through Cancer Institute NSW earlier this year.
Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in Australia, killing more Australians than breast cancer, melanoma or prostate cancer. However, despite being one of our biggest cancer killers, people are not taking potentially life-saving action because they don’t see bowel cancer as important.
Research undertaken by revealed that many Australians believe bowel cancer is less important because of its relatively low profile compared with other cancers.
In fact, 80 Australians die every week from bowel cancer, many of them needlessly when 90 per cent of bowel cancers can be treated successfully when detected early.
The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program provides free, simple-to-use at home screen kits regularly to people aged 50-74, NSW still has the second lowest participation rate in the country.
“From the research, it was clear to us that a key reason for this low participation rate was that too many people simply were not doing the test as they found it ‘icky’ and were embarrassed because it involved poo”, said Gerry Cyron, LOUD’s head of planning and innovation.
“Yet there was a time – when we were children – when poo talk was disarmingly funny and something we talked about daily, that is why we decided to bring poo talk back, charming the people of NSW with a more lighthearted and humourous approach.
“If we can persuade people there is nothing to be embarrassed about then the bowel screening participation levels could go up and lives can be saved.”
In addition to TV, press, radio, online and direct mail, LOUD developed an earned and social campaign engaging the services of well-known comedian Dave O’Neil. The agency developed content pieces to be sent out to media to generate interest in the story.
O’Neil will be participating in interviews throughout the campaign and content pieces will also be used across Facebook and targeted at the core audience of 50-74 year olds.
“There are so many important health messages being communicated to the 50+ community, so we needed this campaign to take a fresh approach in order to change behavior,” said Blanche Marchant from the Bowel Screening Program at the Cancer Institute NSW.
“LOUD’s strategy to use humour and comedian Dave O’Neil as the campaign ambassador provided a unique creative platform in order to do this using social and earned media.
“The Cancer Institute NSW are looking forward to seeing the response to the new campaign bringing poo talk back, and the effect that the campaign will have on boosting the number of men and women in NSW participating in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.”
