The Blue Ball Foundation tasked us to try and get young men to self-check for the signs of testicular cancer.
- Something that they simply weren’t doing.
Testicular cancer is the number 1 cancer in young men, with young men aged 20-39 most at risk. Even though it’s 97% curable when detected early, it’s a subject men avoid.
And Australian men are 21% more likely to get it than the world average.
We needed to find a way to get through to these young men and get them to perform a simple, quick check.
Our goal was nothing less than world awareness. Because the more young men who saw our message, the greater our chances of catching testicular cancer early.
Unsurprisingly, a considerable number of young men watch online pornography.
70% of Australian men according to a Sydney University survey. Once we knew where they were, we needed to get their attention.
To put it another way, we needed to catch them with their pants down. Instead of placing a banner ad on porn sites, we came up with a world first. We decided to embed our message within a pornographic movie.
But not just any pornographic movie.
We approached one of the biggest Adult Entertainment studios in the world and convinced them to include our message in their biggest release of the year, a tribute to the world’s biggest TV show, Game of Thrones.
And rather than an ad, one of the world’s biggest porn stars interrupted her performance to physically demonstrate the simple technique that could save your life. And all young men had to do was copy her.
For the first time ever, an actual porno was interrupted by a public health message.
GAME OF BALLS is now one of the most-watched adult films on the Internet with over 5.5 million views. And as you can imagine, it was up against some serious competition.
With 70% of young Australian men watching porn online, it’s safe to say at least 125,000 blokes got the message. And it’s still saving lives, the world over.
An innovative solution to a tricky problem soon became one of the biggest marketing stories in the world, making its way onto mainstream media and further increasing awareness – to date, a reach of over 60 million people.
We’ve also opened the doors to the world’s braver brands when it comes to branded content.
Now, the vast and previously untapped arena of adult content is fair game for marketers anywhere. This simple media innovation has created an impact that is literally saving men’s lives.
