It’s time to look at the shortlist for Marketer of the Year, which appears in Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue. We’ll be featuring each one online as a lead-up to our January 2013 issue, where you’ll find out which marketer will reign supreme.
The Canadian charity blew up the app-mosphere by taking a sexy approach with an app that reminds women to stay on top of their breast health
“For an organization that’s all about breasts, Rethink has balls.” So says Arthur Fleischmann, partner and president of John St., the Toronto agency that worked with Rethink Breast Cancer to create Your Man Reminder, a free app that prompts women to check their breasts.
Part of the Canadian charity’s most recent early detection campaign, the app allows women to choose one of six buff dudes that look like Magic Mike extras who will then show up on the user’s smartphone to advise her to regularly perform a breast self-exam.
Launched in Oct. 2011, the app was created in celebration of Rethink Breast Cancer’s 10-year anniversary and Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“A health app is no Angry Birds,” says Alison Gordon, Rethink VP, strategy, marketing and communications. “If you look at health apps, I think most of them would be lucky if they have a few hundred people downloading them.” Your Man Reminder blows that away—it’s been downloaded more than 90,000 times.
One major thing the iPhone and Android app has going for it is it offers true utility. And a three-minute video by John St. that was used to promote the app got attention from news outlets worldwide—from the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times to Mashable and The Sydney Morning Herald—won a Webby Award, and was named one of 10 “Ads Worth Spreading” at the TED conference in February.
Rethink wanted to use the app to turn a task that’s a drag into something fun, says Fleischmann. He says although 95% of women know they should check themselves regularly, only a small number actually do. And—to Rethink’s credit—Fleischmann says the Toronto-based charity wasn’t afraid of being politically incorrect. “[They] said to us at the brief, ‘We don’t want any cuddly kittens or flowers.’”
The video reached more than two million online views within six weeks, says Gordon. Rethink’s Facebook fans also catapulted from 9,000 to 20,000 over the month of the campaign’s launch.
Part of the campaign’s appeal for social media users was the fact that they could use Facebook to let others know when they had checked themselves and which fit man from the Your Man Reminder app had prompted them to do so.
Fleischmann says Rethink does a great job of interacting with its community. “It’s partly out of need—they don’t have huge media budgets-—and partly because they’re smart,” he says. “A buck spent on social media does more for them than one spent on a TV buy.”
Updated versions of both the app (the Hottest App Update Ever, as it’s called) and the video were released last month with a new batch of hotties.
Rethink also raised eyebrows and awareness about its Boobyball 10-year-anniversary fundraising event in Oct. 2011 during a stunt at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto. Crispin Porter + Bogusky created the stunt with the charity, placing a group of young topless women with messages about breast health and the event written across their chests at the bustling intersection. It trended on Twitter globally and was retweeted to more than 400,000 Twitter followers.
Another huge project from Rethink was About Her, a feature-length documentary it produced to tell the stories of nine young Canadian women with breast cancer. The film sold to W Network, premiered nationally in Oct. 2011 and also sold to Australia’s ABC network.
Keeping the momentum going in 2012, Rethink launched a platform called “Battle Pink” in October. It got top fashion, health and beauty bloggers to enter a competition to see who could style Rethink partner brands’ pink products best. The contestants took pictures of the various ways they use and style the products—from brands including OPI and Swarovski—and the public voted on their favourite. Penguin Canada then donated a dollar for every
vote. “We can market and create our own platform for cause marketing,” says Gordon.
With a staff of only 12, Rethink continues to create awareness for a serious cause in a unique way. “Rethink seems to understand that to have the tough conversations, you need to create things people want to be involved with—not scared of,” says Fleischmann. “So many charities fall back on the tried and true—tugging at heart strings or scare tactics. But if everyone uses the same approach, no one stands out.” Good thing, then, that Rethink is willing to be different to be heard.
To read more about the companies that made the Media Players of the Year and Marketers of the Year shortlists, check out Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue, which is on newsstands now.
