Over the years, public health promotion has pushed the boundaries. Smoking and alcohol-related campaigns have challenged and sometimes disturbed.
Stuck behind a bus earlier this week, I faced another public health campaign – this time for cervical cancer, created by Camden PCT. However this campaign left me quite confused because all the photos were of men! As it wasn’t an obvious link for me, and because the wording used didn’t put it into context, I decided to google and find out more. I came across a related campaign website set up by the PCT and surprisingly there isn’t a single image of a woman used in the site, although all the text relates to them. There isn’t any explanatory text about the reasons behind the campaign and even a ‘behind-the-scenes’ video about the advert doesn’t have any commentary. Another video on the site asks men what they know about cervical cancer (v little) - so I suppose the angle they’re going for is to get men to pay more attention to this illness, but having road tested this with some male friends the delivery left them quite detached. Not sure that was the campaign’s desired outcome.
Would be interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this campaign – did anyone else get it?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: alcohol, campaign, health promotion, smoking
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onewomanandherblog
Hey – I just followed your link…and see what you mean. There is no explanation of why the ad and website only features blokes. Bizarre. As women are more likely to attend screenings in general than men anyway, I dont get it. I cant see blokes saying to the women in their lives “Hey just saw an ad about cervical cancer. Get screened!”
Maybe its to encorage intrigue and discussion??
I was really intrigued by the weirdness of the campaign site and followed a link to the media company who lay claim to it. The trail led me to this – http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/11/apparently_men_1 which has lots of comments about the campaign, none very complimentary! I think the answer to the question “what makes a good health promotion campaign?” is “Not this!”