A Prostate Cancer Campaign with a Twist

A North Carolina health system creates an attention-grabbing campaign geared not toward the patient, but toward traditional healthcare decision makers—women.

Picture this: Flipping through a magazine, you come across a hospital ad featuring a portrait of an older woman. At first glance there's nothing out of the ordinary—the text describes the hospital's best technological equipment and drivers readers to a campaign landing page.

You're about to turn to the next page when your eyes do a double-take on the headline: Save Her from Prostate Cancer.

Chances are you're not going to flip that page until you read more.

That's the strategy Rex UNC Health Care was betting on with its latest prostate cancer campaign, which ran September through December 2013. The 665-bed Raleigh, NC, hospital created the campaign in response to a new, competitive threat entering the market.

"We wanted to educate the target audience in Wake County about the importance of having your prostate checked," says Dana Harris, the hospital's marketing communications manager. "It was important to solidify Rex's brand as having access to the largest array of treatment services and in the area.

So Rex teamed with Richmond, VA-based agency Neathawk Dubuque & Packett to create an attention-grabbing campaign geared, not toward the patient, but toward the traditional healthcare decision makers—women.

"Men typically are not proactive with healthcare and it is usually their wives that schedule the appointment," Harris says. "This campaign made the women feel those emotions and think about how stressful it would be if her husband had prostate cancer. It was designed to make men think, 'I love her too much to have her go through that.'"

The campaign, which used print, direct mail, online, and digital elements, targeted married couples over age 40.

"Most men do not go to the doctor unless something is seriously wrong," says Brenda Cosby, art director for ND&P. "So how do we get them to care? Make them think of their wife, mother, or their daughter who may be left behind or have to endure the treatment with them."

Once the target audience was established, the marketing team started to consider potential messaging. They ultimately opted for "Save Her from Prostate Cancer" in order to really intrigue readers and make them question the meaning, since the woman pictured obviously couldn't have prostate cancer.

"It was really designed to make the reader, both male and female, think and put them in that position," Harris says. "When people think of prostate cancer they often think that it is only a male disease—well it's not. The fact that is, when you are diagnosed with cancer, it affects not only you, but your loved ones who go through treatment with you."

When it came time to roll out the campaign, Rex started with print ads and Web banners, in order to reach a general audience quickly. The direct mail pieces were then sent out about a month later to a randomly selected group of married couples over the age of 40.

In order to ensure that the consumer could find more information, they drove users to a landing page, AreYou1in6.com, where they could meet the doctors, view the services, and learn why Rex and UNC are the region's places of choice for prostate cancer care.

The campaign made the impression marketers were looking for, generating over 500 unique views to the landing page in just a few months.

"We feel that women really related to this campaign because it put them in the shoes of the person in the photo," Cosby said.

Harris and her team would like to add to the campaign's success down the line by running a refresher effort featuring young girls. "[Men] are not just having their prostate checked for their wives or their mothers, but also for those little girls who want their father to walk them down the aisle or be there for graduation," she says.