Breast Cancer sexualized

Within a few weeks we will do a survey about shockvertising. We want to determine how far we advertising people can go in advertising.

For me this campaign from Poland about breast cancer awareness went too far. But until now I’m the only one. I asked a few friends and on our Facebook Fan Page and all comments are positive.

The campaign in brief: Warsaw ad agency Change Integrated recently replaced one of the models in the adult section of a popular Polish website with Edyta. According to the agency Edyta “trained” almost 175,000 men in a single week on how to examine their partner’s breast, much more than offline breast-check training courses. Men are big kids and they learn best while playing they agency said.

It is good for men to participate. And in advertising campaigns participation is done before. But I don’t like the idea of sexualizing a possible disease.
Breast cancer is already one of the most popular diseases to campaign about because of the erotic relation.
What is the next step? A campaign about colon cancer on a homoerotic website? Making tea baggers aware of testical cancer?

What do you think?

See the video after the break (NSFW).

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Comments

"Breast cancer is already one of the most popular diseases to campaign about because of the erotic relation.”

And that’s where we, as ad guys, have to watch ourselves. It’s very easy to cross the line, or simply to be exploitative.  (I blogged this issue earlier in te week at http://workthatmatters.blogspot.com/2010/08/cause-marketing-on-mother-of-all-media.html).

Breasts get attention, both from male and female audiences. But I think we always have to ask ourselves whether we’re doing the ad just to get attention, or to change the way people think about bodies.

I guess this is why I’m never shocked by pro-breastfeeding campaigns. By normalizing nudity and public exposure in nursing, they serve their purpose by showing that breasts are not shameful or lewd.

But these breast cancer ones — this one and the one in the previous post — seem to take a little too much pleasure in being “allowed” to be so blatant with the boobs.

To follow up on your comment, Marc, the fine line lies between normalizing and sexualizing. The Polish porn campaign definitely does the latter.

I agree Marc – will this campaign make more people aware of breast cancer? Or by objectifying women and sexualising breasts will it make breast cancer less important as an issue?