Hasta La Creative!

Of all our body parts, we humans objectify breasts as the most inherently feminine, right? They serve a utilitarian purpose, sure, but they’re also soft and sexy and men don’t (typically) have them.

But what happens when you undergo a double mastectomy to beat cancer, and then you opt—as nearly 58 percent of women do—not to have breast reconstruction surgery? Are you somehow less feminine? The answer is obviously a resounding no, and that’s what a new ad campaign from gender-neutral underwear company Play Out is looking to communicate.

The campaign features three proudly breastless women—Emily Jensen, Jodi Jaecks and Melly Testa. Play Out partnered on the campaign with support group FlatTopper Pride, which Jensen founded.

“Our dear friend Emily Jensen, who started FlatTopper Pride, was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 31 years old,” Abby Sugar, Play Out co-founder and designer tells AdFreak. “After having a double mastectomy, Emily shared photos of herself on Facebook, on vacation, topless and flat. These were very powerful, strong images, and even though we knew Emily as a dear friend, we didn’t know how much she went through daily as a breast cancer survivor. Not only that, but as a person who stood out against society’s expectations of feminine beauty and the dominant narrative of reconstruction after mastectomy.”

Sugar adds: “We wanted to help her not only show that you can be yourself, no matter your gender presentation, but get the word out about FlatTopper Pride, a space for LGBT people dealing with breast cancer and breast removal to find support. Emily, Jodi and Melly all have unique stories about their treatments and their experiences post-mastectomies. Emily brought Jodi in to tell her story, and introduced us to Melly here on the East Coast. We were extremely inspired by all of them.”

Play Out also points to FlatTopper Pride, where the women featured share their stories.

Adult movies have suddenly become the hot place to put cancer PSAs.

M&C Saatchi in Sydney worked with adult film studio Digital Playground and the Nonprofit Blue Ball Foundation to place an unexpected testicular-cancer PSA inside Game of Balls, an X-rated Game of Thrones parody, last month.

During one of the flick’s steamy scenes, actress Eva Lovia—who really should try harder with her porn name—briefly breaks character (such as it is) to demonstrate a cancer check on a male member of the cast. She also tells viewers to visit PlayWithYourself.org for more information. It’s stroke of genius, I’d say! (But I say lots of silly things.)

Check out the case study below, which is not explicit but might be a bit NSFW anyway.

So far, 200,000 people have visited the site, and total video views have passed 1.5 million, according to the video. “We’re overwhelmed with the amount of feedback we’ve been getting, from emails to Facebook messages to phone calls from all over the world,” says Blue Balls founder Jamie Morgan.

This isn’t the first ballsy way of generating exposure for the cause. McCann Lima and PornHub recently dispatched adult performer Charlotte Stokely—now that’s a porn-star name!—to show men how to perform self-examinations, and Cancer Research U.K. went all-in with last year’s selfie-sock campaign. (There was also DDB Bolivia’s breast-check adult clip, though Pornhub has questioned that case study’s claims of success.)

In any case, hopefully some of the messaging will rub off on the intended audience.

If you take a flash photograph of a child, and one of his or her pupils looks white in the resulting image, it can indicate an eye tumor. In the U.K., a series of ads uses reflective ink to illustrate that warning sign, in the hope of teaching parents how to recognize it.

The ads, located at doctors offices and day care centers, feature kids who actually survived retinoblastoma, a rare but potentially fatal form of eye cancer that in most cases affects infants, toddlers and young children. If you snap a flash picture of the poster, you can see what to watch out for in pictures of your own kids.

Childhood Eye Cancer Trust, aka CHECT, is the nonprofit group behind the campaign. Agency Wunderman created the ads. There’s also an social component—Fast Company has more details on the awareness push, and the production process, which presented a unique challenge.

It’s an incredibly smart, simple use of media, given how many people carry smartphones, and the fact that early detection can save a child’s life or eyesight.

Great Odin’s Raven! If you ever wanted to play video games with self-proclaimed video game wiz Will Ferrell, here’s your chance to do so—and support a great cause.

The Saturday Night Live alumnus is asking fans to donate money to help kids who are battling childhood cancers. One lucky donor will get to spend an evening gaming with Ferrell in San Francisco, all of which will be livestreamed on Twitch.

The proceeds from the campaign, being crowdfunded on Indiegogo will go to Cancer for College and DonateGames.org. The former provides scholarships to cancer survivors; the latter helps children with cancer and their families by using video games and other technology, including selling game bundles to raise money for financial aid or donating video games and equipment to hospitals.

Hear the contest announcement from Will Pharell himself, who allegedly once played Asteroids for 37 hours without taking a bathroom break:

If you don’t win Will Ferrell’s SuperMegaBlastMax Gamer Challenge, there’s still plenty of swag to take home from partners like Amazon, Twitch and Microsoft. There’s also awesome limited-edition Ferrell gear including his special gamers’ sunscreen, and best of all, signed cowbells. Trust me: We all need a little more cowbell in our life.

No ano passado, quando fui fazer novas tatuagens e retocar as antigas, percebi que meu tatuador prestou muita atenção às minhas pintas. É estranho pensar em como a gente se sente à vontade com um tatuador para analisar e tocar a nossa pele, mas sentimos um imenso desconforto quando é um dermatologista quem faz isso. É por isso que a sacada dos criativos da Ogilvy Brasil foi tão boa: convocar tatuadores para ajudarem no combate ao câncer de pele, ensinando-os a detectar sinais que ajudem no diagnóstico precoce.

Apoiada pela marca carioca de protetor solar Sol de Janeiro, a campanha Tatuadores Contra o Câncer de Pele tem oferecido palestras ministradas pelo oncologista João Duprat Neto, diretor do Núcleo de Câncer de Pele e Dermatologia do A.C.Camargo Cancer Center e consultor técnico do projeto – com a participação de mais de 450 tatuadores.

O curso também é oferecido online, e os resultados já começaram a aparecer, conforme podemos ver no vídeo acima.

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Here's something I never thought I'd say: I just got weepy listening to "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls. 

In an incredibly touching tribute to the group's frontwoman, Chrissy Amphlett, some of Australia's top singers have recorded a largely a capella version for a video encouraging women to self-examine their breasts for lumps. 

Amphlett, one of the most shockingly sexual pop artists of the 1990s, died from breast cancer on April 21, 2013. According to Billboard, an ultrasound and mammogram initially missed the cancer, which Amphlett ended up finding on her own through self-examination. 

Friends say her dying wish was that her 1990 hit song could become a reminder for all women to check themselves regularly for lumps and other signs of breast cancer. So Australian advocacy group Cancer Council NSW (New South Wales) worked with Amphlett's widower and supporters to create the beautiful rendition below.

The singers are Connie Mitchell, Deborah Conway, Kate Cerebrano, Katie Noonan, Little Pattie, Megan Washington, Olivia Newton-John, Sarah Blasko, Sarah McLeod and Suze DeMarchi. You can watch interviews with each of them on Amphlett's YouTube channel.

"It is a song that celebrates female sexuality like no other. Like Chrissy, it is bold, brave and brassy," the group says in its video summary. "It rocked our world. And when Chrissy developed breast cancer, it was a song she wanted to become an anthem for spreading awareness about the importance of touching ourselves for early detection of the disease."

Note: The video below ends on a scene that might be NSFW. But you really shouldn't let that stop you from watching it.

Há alguns dias, mostramos por aqui uma campanha canadense de prevenção ao câncer testicular, protagonizada por 20 homens enfrentando uma depilação dos testículos. Os alertas sobre o problema continuam ao redor do mundo, como na Espanha, onde a VCCP de Madri assina “Está en tu Mano. Enséñaselos a tu Médico” (Está em sua mão. Mostre-os a seu médico) para a Asociación Española de Adolescentes y Adultos Jóvenes con Cáncer.

De tempos em tempos, alguém decide ressuscitar o chatroulette e, desta vez, a decisão parece ter sido bastante acertada, especialmente diante da informação apresentada no início do vídeo acima: 7 entre 10 usuários masculinos dos sites de bate-papo aleatório com vídeo usam a ferramenta para exibir seus genitais para desconhecidos.

É daí que entra o raciocínio da VCCP: se os homens mostram seus genitais para milhares de pessoas na internet, por que não mostrar para seus médicos? Foi esta a mensagem passada por meio de placas por uma modelo que teve de encarar alguns caras bem desinibidos.

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Tem circulado pela internet nos últimos dias um vídeo que mostra 20 homens sendo depilados… nos testículos. Se você é homem e se contorceu só de imaginar, então a campanha de conscientização do câncer testicular criada pela BBDO Toronto e produzida pela Crush já está surtindo efeitos.

A ideia é incentivar homens a fazerem, com regularidade, os devidos exames para a detecção deste tipo de câncer, para que eles mesmos não sejam obrigados a passar por uma depilação de testículos e sofrer igual aos voluntários da campanha.

As expressões são divertidas – afinal, pimenta no dos outros é refresco. Só fico imaginando as mulheres que fizeram parte da equipe criativa insistindo na ideia e garantindo que não ia doer nada, como se fossem vingadoras de todas as mulheres que passam por isso periodicamente…

Não é de hoje que cocôs costumam ser humanizados por aí – basta lembrarmos de Chet, em “Mulher Nota Mil” (1985), o popular Mr. Hankey, de “South Park”, ou ainda este clássico do Cocoricó. Mais do que isso, não são apenas os cocôs da ficção que sempre têm algo a dizer, mas os da realidade também. E a julgar pelo novo filme da MLD Stichting criado pela Cheel, temos de ouvi-lo.

Com direção de Floris Kingma e produção da Czar, “Your Poop Wants to Tell You Something!” mira na conscientização do câncer de cólon, destacando que pessoas com mais de 50 anos devem prestar mais atenção no assunto.

A “jornada do cocô” começa no esgoto e mostra toda a sua trajetória só para poder entregar uma mensagem para, digamos, o seu criador. Apesar do escatológico tema, você acaba se envolvendo com a história para saber, afinal, o que é tão importante que mereça tanto esforço do pobre cocô.

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In an age when social media has made us even more aware of how we look at any given moment ("A picture? Now? Wait, how's my hair?"), asking women to take photos of themselves without makeup and upload them to social channels seems risky. And yet, thousands are doing it in the U.K. in the name of cancer awareness.

A "No makeup selfie" campaign grew organically in Britain in recent weeks, and ended up raising several million pounds for Cancer Research U.K., even though the group initially had nothing to do with the effort.

Author Laura Lippman apparently started the trend to support actress Kim Novak, whose looks were criticized at the Oscars. Others picked up on the idea, and somehow the hashtag #breastcancerawareness and donation links to Cancer Research U.K. started getting added to the selfies. "It's brilliant it's raising so much money. It's totally unexpected because it wasn't something we planned," a rep for the group tells Britain's Telegraph newspaper.

Because most interesting ideas need a fun spinoff, the hashtag #manupandmakeup also started trending, as men put on makeup to raise money for Prostate Cancer U.K.

If this raises cash or awareness, cool. #nomakeupselfie @CR_UK I donated here http://t.co/5hHvAQ3vKZ boys? Your turn! pic.twitter.com/YdUQ94G1yW

— suzi perry (@suziperry) March 21, 2014

Has your feed has been full of #nomakeupselfies this week?The @CR_UK campaign has raised £2m http://t.co/ke0xlQwmBg pic.twitter.com/kjiPpG3SWU

— Maddy Savage (@maddysavage) March 22, 2014

Thanks to all of you who have donated because of the #nomakeupselfie trend. We are overwhelmed by your support! pic.twitter.com/GjH38dufuV

— Cancer Research UK (@CR_UK) March 19, 2014