Prostate Cancer Campaign

John raised prostate cancer awareness through this cheeky campaign.

As a result of his role with the Greater Building Society, John is often asked to help devise campaigns for charitable and non-profit organisations. One such organisation is the Prostate Survival Alliance (P.S.A.), which is a group of people who have had some personal experience with prostate cancer.

Chairman of the Alliance is former Newcastle Police Chief, Ron Bender, with medical advisers being Professor Jim Denham and Professor John Forbes. The Alliance has an objective to encourage more men to have a simple blood test called P.S.A., which may, with further testing, enable an early diagnosis of prostate cancer. Early diagnosis of prostate cancer increases the likelihood of a full cure.

So John’s role was to encourage men over 50 years of age to get a simple blood test, so that their PSA levels could be measured. For men over 50 years of age, the chance of developing prostate cancer is 1 in 8 throughout their remaining life.

Given that most Australian men consider themselves to be ten foot tall and bulletproof, John’s task was not an easy one. He needed to get through that brick veneer of a “sense of immortality”, and prompt men to get along to their doctor and get a referral for a blood test.

He knew that all of the normal measures of “soft encouragement” would fall of deaf ears, as men simply do not like going to their doctor, even when they have the flu.

Therefore, John created a cheeky and somewhat provocative television campaign which combined a message of “wife nagging” together with “the pierce of a syringe”. The result was a number of 30-second television advertisements were produced, with the initial test case being screened in the Hunter Valley. (The Hunter Valley was chosen because it happened to have a 40% higher death rate from prostate cancer than the city of Sydney.)

The campaign is still in its early days at the time of writing, but early results indicate a substantial increase in men volunteering for a PSA test.

Additionally, John designed letterbox brochures which were of a similar theme and these were distributed to homes in areas which had a predominance of over 50’s. If the tests in the Hunter Valley proved to be successful in increasing PSA tests by men (and early indications are very positive), it is hoped that the campaign can extend further throughout Australia.

JOHN DWYER

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