Finalist
Time to Unite
Summary of work
Female breast cancer surpassed lung cancer as the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide for the first time in 2020, with an estimated 2.3 million new cases . The ambition of The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) 2021 UK & Ireland’s Breast Cancer Campaign was to reach under-represented communities, often disproportionally affected by breast cancer, and encourage everybody to regularly check their breasts.
Evelyn H Lauder co-created the now iconic pink ribbon 30 years’ ago at a time when awareness of the disease was low. To add new energy to what is now a crowded space and bring under-represented communities into the breast cancer discourse, we needed to create a new health conversation. By working with breast cancer warriors from the top three groups that were least likely to check – women under 40, black women and South Asian women – we gave our influencers a voice to demonstrate that it is not just a disease affecting older, middle-class, white women – it can affect everybody.
The campaign ignited media and social discussion across earned channels consumed by hard-to-reach audiences, achieving record event attendance, a high number of downloads of new self-check materials and a legacy of increased self-checking.
Judges’ comments
The results in this entry from Golin and Estee Lauder were impressive and focused on who really needs to be at the centre of the campaign, highlighting the need to move away from ‘pink-washing’. The judges found the campaign interesting as a new way to approach the topic of breast cancer.
