October has been designated Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
It is also the host month of Stoptober, encouraging people to stop smoking and raising awareness of lung cancer. You may not, however, be aware that November is also Lung Cancer Awareness Month, as well as the more famous Movember (prostate cancer) or that December is in fact Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
And it doesn't stop there; next year there's Cervical Cancer Screening Awareness Week, Cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) Month, World Cancer Day, Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, Bowel Cancer Awareness Month and Sun Awareness Month. It seems that Awareness Months are spreading through the calendar like the disease they are raising money to cure.
It seems each cancer related charity is competing with the next to increase its profile and capture the donor’s pound. It’s a difficult conundrum. Each charity wants to do the best for their beneficiaries yet by pursuing the route they are taking, they seem to be getting lost in the monthly bun fight for awareness.
And generating money is definitely getting tougher than ever. In the November 2012 report by the Charities Aid Foundation and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, it was established that charitable donations had declined by 20% in real terms year on year. The outbreak of awareness months that has spread determinedly throughout the year does not seem to be having the impact that each one promises, or was hoping for.
But they can be effective. Stoptober, in only its second year, relies heavily on their CRM communications plan after the initial TV burst. The campaign targets all smokers encouraging them to quit for 28 days, after which time, if they haven’t smoked, they are five times more likely to give up for good. Once they have registered they receive SMS and email support for the 28 day challenge. In this programme, designed and implemented by Lateral Group, Stoptober has created a campaign that has had over 600,000 unique visits to the microsite and encouraged approximately 240,000 people to register onto the scheme.
Breast Cancer Campaign, on a much tighter budget recognised the scale of the task to be heard above other ‘pink’ charities, in their quest to eradicate breast cancer for future generations. The strategy is built on their findings that there are over 500,000 women living with breast cancer today and that without finding a cure, that number could rise to a shocking 1.2 million by 2030. The campaign created by Sideshow, ‘Help us find the cure. Before she finds the cancer,’ features a young prepubescent girl, emitting a strong message that brings with it urgency and compassion in equal measure.
Cancer Research UK's ‘Every Moment Counts’ initiative takes a much softer approach. The campaign encourages cancer survivors to celebrate the moments they now relish by uploading them to an online platform. This is driven by a documentary style film which captures the joys to be found in every day, once the battle against cancer is won. Conceived by AMVBBDO, this online campaign will build hope for many and further the cause for the charity.
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