"It seems that everyone's best efforts have just become so much wallpaper," says BBDO Cape Town's group account director, Kay Orlandi.
"What is required is a message that breaks through the everyday and actually succeeds in creating the necessary actions - regular breast examinations - on an individual level. The terrifying prevalence of breast cancer is offset by the fact that if detected early recovery rates are excellent. We felt that we could get that message out there and have made it part of our corporate responsibility to do so."
In order to really succeed, the campaign needs to spread the "Touch Yourself" message to as many women as possible.
This first ad is the driver in an opportunistic campaign designed to initiate copycat images throughout the local media industry. The radio personalities who bared their breasts for the "Touch Yourself" cancer awareness campaign have been joined by the female staff at BBDO Cape Town, 25 of whom have posed for the agency's own version of the ad.
The image of the women from the agency is dramatically different from that of Good Hope FM and not merely because of the numbers. There is a bracing honesty in the BBDO shot that makes it a more realistic proposition for women from other agencies and media to follow suit.
Orlandi, who is driving the campaign, says: "We are all beautiful. Every single one of us, every size, every shape, every skin colour. In deciding to bare my breasts for the campaign I realised that if I could make just a handful of women initiate regular breast examinations it would be worth it.
"The BBDO Cape Town image appeared in The Star and The Independent [recently] and we estimate with this coverage and that achieved by Good Hope FM that we would have reached 1 813 000 people (of which 59% or 1 068 000 are women). If just 1% of these women act on it, we may have saved a life."
Another BBDO agency in South Africa, Net#work BBDO in Johannesburg, produced their own version of the image last week. The staff at a national women's magazine are the next in line. And, says Orlandi, "it is hoped that this momentum is just a taste of things to come in a campaign that will continue until next October, leaving no one 'untouched' by its message."
