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North West Cancer Research

  • Creative
  • Public relations
  • Digital marketing
  • Insight

Brief

In 2024, the NHS lowered the bowel cancer screening age, but with 1 in 3 people not returning kits, awareness was low.

Challenge

Bowel cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the North West, so North West Cancer Research tasked Influential with creating a powerful, content-driven campaign to raise awareness and boost early detection rates to help save lives.

We needed to encourage younger people – those aged 54 to 74 – to embrace bowel cancer screening and return their kits.

We wanted to grab the attention of those who were unfamiliar with the concept of an at-home test and those who may have even found it worrying.

Extensive media coverage across the region was the way to do this which would, in turn, help to strengthen the charity’s profile.

Interviews with our target audience revealed that many people wrongly believed they were too young to receive a home testing kit.

To resonate with this generation, we built a creative campaign inspired by the iconic culture of the 60s/70s/80s, tapping into the shared memories and creating a strong sense of nostalgia.

This made them realise they were, in fact, eligible for a screening kit.

We infused regionality into our campaign by incorporating local football club memories and featuring a high-profile former Everton FC player, Kevin Sheedy, as our spokesperson.

By highlighting beloved venues across the region in the campaign creative, such as Eric’s in Liverpool and the Hacienda in Manchester, we made the content relatable and memorable for our audience, enhancing their engagement with the campaign.

Solution

The
Solution

Results

94% of everyone who saw the campaign felt it encouraged them to return their kit.

Men are most likely to be diagnosed with bowel cancer. Post-campaign research showed that 83% of men said the campaign “strongly encouraged” them to return their bowel screening kits.

We achieved 21 pieces of media coverage across the region, including a piece on ITV Granada Reports which ran the full campaign video, along with multiple hits across radio and online platforms resulting in over 146,000 estimated views.

Our digital campaign was executed across Meta, YouTube and LoopMe and delivered 4,407,213 impressions and 1,884,660 views.

Post-campaign research illustrated how general awareness of the charity had increased, rising from 31% to 56% of those questioned.

21

pieces of media coverage including ITV Granada Reports 

146K

estimated views

4.4M

impressions

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