The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2024
Testicular Cancer Society taught men self-checks inside football highlights
The Testicular Cancer Society taught self-checks inside football highlights, earning 42 million impressions on a £7,000 media budget.
Testicular Cancer Society
The solution
One in 250 men will develop testicular cancer in their lifetime, and early detection is decisive, yet most men turn away from traditional self-check tutorials, online and offline. The Testicular Cancer Society needed a way to reach the men who ignore the serious version of the message.
FP7 McCann Dubai found a different kind of ball-focused content men love: football highlight videos. Players are constantly seen with their hands protectively covering their crotches, so the campaign interrupted popular videos with mid-rolls of players striking that stance while examining themselves.
The same lesson was woven into live commentary: YouTube livestreamers and the world's biggest sports radio station, Talksport, added playful self-check lines during free-kick setups, turning the tensest moment of a match into a teaching moment.
Highlight Your Balls earned 42 million impressions, a 45% rise in Testicular Cancer Society website visits, a 30% gain in acquisition, a 92% jump in homepage interactions, and a 338% surge in donations - on a media budget of about £7,000.
Why it worked
- It meets young men inside content they already watch, so no new habit is required.
- Humour disarms a topic that serious tutorials make them avoid.
- The mid-roll borrows a real instinctive moment, so the lesson lands at peak attention.
- A tiny budget forced a media idea instead of paid reach, and the idea out-earned it.
What can be applied
When the audience rejects the message, find the moment they already perform the behaviour you need to teach - then borrow that moment instead of building a new one.
Aftermath
Highlight Your Balls won the Grand Prix for Good at Dubai Lynx 2025 and a Cannes Lions Silver Lion for Brand Experience & Activation, and was a Media Week Awards finalist. The campaign logged 42 million impressions and lifted donations 338% on a media budget of roughly £7,000.
Sources
- Testicular Cancer Society - Highlight Your Balls
- Using football humour to creatively highlight a different kind of balls
- All the 2025 Dubai Lynx Awards
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