It seems like a clever idea. Take a depressingly serious subject and mix it with a little tongue-in-cheek humour to reach an audience that might otherwise not pay attention.
That appears to be the premise behind Keep A Breast Foundation's campaign to educate Canadian youth about breast cancer prevention and early detection.
Chances are you've heard about all the fuss surrounding the campaign.
Well, it's not so much the campaign and its message as it is the campaign's slogan -- I Love Boobies.
Yes, that's the slogan being splashed across the promotional material for a very well-intentioned message about cancer awareness.
Now, if there's ever a word that's going to bring out the giggly school boy/school girl in all of us, it's boobies. So, is it any surprise that some high school students aren't exactly being mature about one of the campaign's major tools: a bracelet baring the slogan in big white letters?
This week, students at a middle school in Kelowna were told to leave their I Love Boobies bracelets at home, following similar bans imposed in some Ontario schools earlier this year.
Kelowna School District superinterndent Hugh Gloster said some students at Springvalley Middle School were not being mature about them; they were using the bracelets more as a novelty item, rather than promoting awareness of breast cancer.
What, teenagers misusing a health campaign slogan that reads I Love Boobies? Say it isn't so!
Forgive us for being cynical, but didn't anyone in Keep A Breast Foundation's marketing department foresee this?
Hold on a second, perhaps they did. Perhaps this was all a well-executed plan to get attention for a foundation most of us have never heard of. Not only has the campaign caused a commotion in Kelowna, but students in Ontario's Durham School District were asked to remove the bracelets last May and other students in Whitby and Oshawa were told to cover up T-shirts with the same slogan.
So, in the short term the campaign is gaining by putting the foundation on the public radar.
But in the long run, are the youth getting the message about breast health?
--Kamloops Daily News
