We don’t know about you, but as of late, our Facebook and
Twitter feed has been clogged up with photos of varying degrees of feral facial
hair sprouting across men’s upper lips. Guys who we are used to seeing clean shaven are now starting
to resemble the likes of Tom Selleck with his manly-mo in Three Men and a Baby
or Hulk Hogan with his infamous horseshoe tash.
We are, of course, talking about Movember and, it seems, there is a definite increase in participants this year.
Some have been proving their masculinity with big, hairy caterpillars that have taken up residence between their nose and mouth while others are undoubtedly yet to fill out. But whatever stage their mo’s are at it is great to see so many men raising awareness for prostate cancer and other issues affecting men’s health.
As we touched upon in our last blog, a campaign we carried out on behalf of NHS Hull called ‘Blokes Jokes’ did just that. Following extensive research into understanding the, somewhat, hard-to-reach target audience – men aged 45+ living in areas of deprivation; we came up with the idea ‘Blokes Jokes’. Recruiting two local comedians to write and perform materials that were entertaining and that communicated serious health messages we took the show on the road. Appearing in a number of challenging venues across Hull we delivered four events and interacted face-to-face with the target audience. This campaign, which appeared as part of Hull’s much-loved Comedy Festival, was a huge success with 90% of audiences recalling the health messages three months later. There was also clear evidence of men changing their lifestyle behaviours as a direct result of the campaign which meant a second phase ‘For Better, For Worse’ was then commissioned for delivery.
It is not just this campaign, however, that has endeavoured to encourage behaviour changes and discussion of men’s health subjects. We also actively targeted men in a campaign commissioned by the North East Yorkshire and Humber Clinical Alliance (NEYHCA) called ‘Throat wrecked? Get it checked’. Aimed at raising awareness of the signs of throat cancer the target group was mainly men aged over 50 who had the highest incidence of this type of cancer in the region. Launch events that we arranged at a number of local football stadiums, as part of pre-match entertainment, was an ideal way to directly speak to the gender concerned. The entertainment included interacting with the crowds, encouraging supporters to wear toad masks – a memorable sign of the campaign, leaflet distribution and fun, informal activities between the team’s mascot and the campaign’s toad character.
Not only that, but we also created a DVD resource on behalf of NHS Hull that helped to promote awareness and understanding of men’s mental health, specifically focusing on depression. The DVD Peter’s Story, a short fictional film based in Hull aimed to help men understand depression and its effect on their lives, gained large media interest, has become a major ongoing suicide prevention campaign in the region and created a lot of constructive discussions around men’s mental health. The campaign encouraged managers from commercial businesses to distribute the DVD around their teams and was also incorporated into many public sector organisations’ agendas and distributed to patients they were treating. Peter’s Story was rolled out nationally after being recognised by the Director of Mental Health First Aid Training and continues to be a success.
So, as Movember rolls on and the sheer amount of potentially magnificent facial hair on show grows bushier each day, we hope that everyone supports their slightly dishevelled looking Mo Bros in supporting this unique cause.
Here are just some of our friends and family doing their bit…
No comments:
Post a Comment