The worst cervical cancer campaign ever...

I have a relative who works in advertising, broadly speaking

I remember her talking about a seminar/webinar where the participants were urged to talk to people outside their social circle and to read things other than the Guardian.

I don't know how many people in advertising get this sort of advice, or heed it even if they do. Very frew, I suspect.

Beautifully put @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision

NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision

Your post explains this so brilliantly. This is the level of knowledge, compassion and understanding that gets lost when feminist thinking is stifled and faux feminist voices are amplified in order to not upset men.

The second group includes women who've suffered sexual trauma in the past. Even if every smear is actually fine and every HCP turns out to be a lovely, caring woman (this is my experience) it is still a very difficult procedure to force oneself to attend.

Thank you, all of you! You're very kind!

Unfortunately, these campaigns seem to be developed by people whose social circles are somewhat limited. It's painfully obvious that to many in marketing, people with learning disabilities and illiterate adults are theoretical concepts they've only ever read about, which is fine when they're advertising high-end consumer products to wealthy young professionals.

Cancer screening campaigns, however, should be targeted at a much wider audience.

Great post, very well explained. 👏🏻

As well as using clear language, cervical screening ads need to reassure women about the procedure. That advert fails on both counts.

Honestly, Neighbourhood, you most excellent post will simply be continued to be ignored. Because all the previous posts have been ignored. No. Apologies, I think one poster admitted that if women didn't know they even had a cervix, then yeah... maybe money should be spend to educate them.

The issue is that there seems to be some people out there who think that 'carry on' film type humour is an appropriate in raising awareness in women who are NOT aware they have a cervix OR have cultural, trauma, time constraints, or a huge number of reasons to not attend their appointments. And this supposed ummm... risqué , was that how it was described?, approach is simply going to fail to reach them.

Yes, some people might get a laugh out of it.

People laugh at rape jokes too, don't they?

I don't consider that some women laugh at this as a convincing argument that it is successful at reaching the people they need to.

Again, we have been told we should accept a very low bar for success here. 'If it saves even a few lives, the denigration of women through the dismissal of their experiences should be considered worthwhile.' Fuck that.

Perfect explanation, NeighbourhoodWatch - I think you've said everything that needs to be said. If only the charity would hire you or someone like you to advise them.

Very well explained.

Um. Look. <tries to find words>

This is a hasty generalisation, but there may be two main groups of women who don't attend screening programmes.

The first group aren't going because they're not fully aware what a cervix is, where it is, or who has one. One reason might be that they speak English as an additional language. So that's a language barrier.

Another reason might be that they received a poor education despite being native English speakers. I once had a young adult woman, who had not been allowed to attend state education past primary school, ask me if women could get pregnant from oral sex acts on a man if they swallowed semen. Careful questioning revealed that her understanding of pregnancy had not developed beyond "the baby grows in its mother's tummy for nine months". She quite literally thought a pregnant woman had the baby in her stomach, so it made sense to her that swallowing semen could also result in conception. If you think she knew what a cervix was, you're off your rocker.

A third reason might be because they have learning disabilities; the screening rates for women with learning disabilities are much lower than for women without learning disabilities, across all types of screening. In one set of statistics, for 2014-2015, the cervical cancer screening rate for eligible women with LDs was less than half of the rate for women without LDS; only 30.2% of eligible women aged between 25-34 with LDs were screened for cervical cancer, compared with over 70% of eligible women in the same age group without LDs. This isn't a benign statistical quirk to be ignored, because women with learning disabilities also have a life expectancy that is 18 years lower than unaffected women.

The pat answer here will be "well awareness raising will help those women then! Isn't this campaign brilliant!"

If you're about to take anything I've typed so far as an endorsement of this installation, look at the photo in the OP again. After that, consider this form of phrasing from North West Cancer:

Almost 1 in 3 people aged 25-49 in the North West don’t attend their cervical screening. Yet our cervical cancer rates are 19% higher than the rest of England. Screening helps lower your chances of getting cervical cancer. That’s why it's so important to not leave your risk of developing cervical cancer to chance.

If you don't already know what a cervix is, where it is, or who has one, what has this installation done to inform you? How has it increased your personal awareness?

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some people looked at that and concluded that "cervical cancer" affected the legs.

Now I will move on to the second group of women who don't engage with the screening programme. They do know where a cervix is and who has one: that's why they're not booking appointments to have a screening. Perhaps they have already experienced painful or traumatic screenings, or perhaps they have good reason to expect that any future one will be painful or traumatic.

Either way, they have plenty of awareness already.

What they need is reassurance that they will be taken seriously and treated with respect during an appointment. They want confirmations that they will be treated with gentleness and compassion; promises that the nurse or other HCP won't be dismissive. In short, adverts for screening need to build trust with prospective patients.

This installation provides none of the above. Its "jokey and cheeky" approach is actually counter-productive; in fact, it encapsulates the dismissive attitude to women's pain and discomfort that has led to so many women refusing to ever have another cervical screening test!

But oh… it was successful! People now know the name of the charity!!! That is raising awareness.

This frankly unpleasant, dehumanised and cynical marketing approach is currently beloved of corporate retail. Who don't care about anything more than the name of the product spreading, and impacting sales.

It is a truly stupid idea to embrace it for a charity supposedly working for the trust and engagement of women in cervical smears. Unless of course, the charity sees itself largely as a corporate retailer and is focused only on sales and money generation, and is not remotely interested in women or the work they were created to do.

It would be a problem common to almost all now of the large charities, and a reason I will now only donate to small, local charities whose only interest is in their cause, not in growing their empire, income and personal paychecks.

There should be some sort of public service that detects anyone claiming 'no such thing as bad publicity' and sends Gerald Ratner round for a chat.

Yes Empress! Exactly like that.

In fact, if I were redoing my studies I would be asking my lecturers about how this spread of the myth of ‘no such thing as bad publicity’ has got so far. Because from experience it comes down to a very few cases where a marketing team could turn a deeply negative result into a positive.

I think most unthinking people associate it with superficial actions like when someone posts something negative that reflects very poorly on the person posting and the organisation being maligned can respond with grace and can turn it into a positive experience for all. Or for when a campaign goes off the rails but it is salvageable in some way. Or organisations have big enough budgets and reach to quickly do something that distracts.

South Cost Endometriosis now is known for being an trans activist charity and not women centred, and this charity NWCR may end up being known as the cancer research organisation that hates women. Both of these results will take a very long time to regain trust and will require budget that they cannot spare and perhaps directional change of leaders. (Ie team leaders being replaced )

Certainly any organisation needing women to trust them will never breezily state ‘no such thing as bad publicity’. But it seems there are some people who really are hard of thinking.

Personally I've always thought that health care professionals - and I'm talking about basically most of the female doctors and nurses who have given me smears - need to be trained to administer smears gently.

I've had large speculums inserted when actually a smaller would do. There's ways of having a gentle touch. I do feel that patients are treated a bit like cattle at times - having had my fair share of canulas inserted and blood taken, this heavy-handedness is everywhere.

This message 'uncross your legs' reinforces that mentality I think.

HPV can lie dormant for years - and when domant it can't be detected by the test. A negative test now doesn't mean that you don't have it or that it won't 'activate' and cause problems in future.

Its awful @UnremarkableBeasts and I'm sorry you had a horrid experience with the GP. We had a similar thing a few weeks ago when my son tried to get help; GP didn't want to know, ambulance service said they were too busy to come out and drop in centre told him he had to make an appointment. He was too ill to wait so had to go to A&E where he was treated for a serious infection. Thankfully we've prevented a situation from escalating but the whole system is horrific. As for smear tests, why on earth are we being coerced/pressed like this, are our bodies not our own?

How is having your cancer research charity associated with a deeply polarized message any type of positive outcome?

That is the antithesis of successful campaign.

I cannot imagine being the campaign lead in that one, standing up in front of the board and saying ‘yes, it was a great success! We got 60 media mentions, the most we ever have achieved! We estimate that we go 705 million people seeing the campaign! We had 2000 emails sent in. The NHS saw no discernible increase in appointments being kept or made.’

Then the chair of the board asks about the negative publicity they saw some reports of and the campaign lead admits that of the 60 media mentions, 40 were negative mentions, and that the majority of the views countered were from negative social media mentions.

But oh… it was successful! People now know the name of the charity!!! That is raising awareness.

Whereas, I suspect that in the wrap up of the communications media ‘campaigns of the year’ this may be mentioned under ‘most divisive communications fails for 2023’. And ‘Influential’ will be desperately trying to rely on their previous work to hide this campaign.

A campaign in what is supposedly a more enlightened era where women’s trauma is not dismissed or used against them by those privileged not to be triggered by the campaign. But yay!!! Awareness!!! Am I right?

Just like people are talking about Endometriosis South Coast?

It looks like the Superdrug test could tell you. I might get one myself.

Have you actually read any of the posts on here from those of us this has upset due to past trauma? Saying how this meant we won’t ever go for the test again? And that’s just on this thread, magnify the number throughout the country this has upset. Is that a good campaign?

edit to add, what happened to me was not physical abuse but was enough to put me off smears. Last night I dreamt of those plastic legs in the advert, and that GP saying “lovely legs, lovely legs” and spent most of the night reading instead of sleeping. I can only imagine how abuse survivors feel seeing the advert and I really hope this isn’t the final straw for anybody struggling.

Could you set a lower bar?

if someone decides to carry out some sort of dreadful massacre in the name of a cause, it’ll ’get people talking’ and ‘raise awareness’ of their cause. Does that sound like a good outcome? Is that ‘awareness raising’ helpful?

It’s not true that all publicity is good publicity. Poorly judged comms campaigns can, and often do, make things worse.

So… I’m wondering now… after many years of smears, does someone somewhere know if I’m HPV negative? Can I find out?

I’m not sexually active, so could avoid future smears if I’m HPVn- right now?

FFS. Talking about their trauma and how this ad has been useless? You honestly think that those actions have delivered the objective of the campaign?

Or is this another mindless ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ appeal to falsity?

I think it's a good campaign. Rightly or wrongly, it's got people talking. Thus, raising awareness of cervical screening.

Thanks CC. I'm sure there are quite a number of women who would do a self administered test who would not go for a smear with strangers.

Perhaps one of these organisations might spend some money looking at the possibilities at some point. Instead of that humiliating and ridiculous installation.