Breast Cancer Awareness and Social Media: The Meme that Fell Short

I must admit, the only reason I remember that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month is the NFL. As a healthcare practitioner I am empathetic to those who have and are suffering with this disease. I am fortunate not to have anyone close to me ever diagnosed with it. The CDC reports that over 239,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, and over 42,000 died.

The actions taken by the NFL bring breast cancer awareness and the need for research funds closer to home. Many players have emotional stories about loved ones who have beaten or succumbed to this disease. Having a close bond with the NFL fan community, these stories create increased empathy and can motivate me to act. The NFL mobile app makes contributing to this charity even easier. The NFL has reportedly donated over $3 million to breast cancer research since 2009 (critics argue it’s far too little).

Not all breast cancer awareness campaigns have had similar results. More than a decade ago, a series of Facebook memes surfaced to increase breast cancer awareness. The memes involved private message requests to women. The initial message asked them to update their status to their first name followed by a color. The color was to represent the color of their bra. This was meant to spark curiosity among friend groups and tangentially raise awareness about breast cancer. Another message campaign asked women to update their status with the phrase “I like it” followed by a location. Secretly this location was where they liked to put their purses.

These campaigns were extremely successful in spreading a message. One factor that might account for this is the sexual innuendos inherent to the messages. The campaign even garnered national attention in the U.S. This message was not received positively by everyone. Meghan Casserly wrote in her Forbes article:

“Not surprisingly, when I found out that this whole “I like it on the…” Facebook meme was a flirty trend that somehow was meant to “raise awareness for breast cancer,” I was equally grossed out.”

So, was the campaign successful? If we use message diffusion as our only metric, the simple answer is yes. But if we consider mobilizing a community to act as our metric, the campaign falls short. The messages were distantly connected to breast cancer and ambiguous for the target audience. There is no objective evidence that the campaigns increased donations or other offline charitable actions.  According to Mahoney & Tang, the ultimate goal of any social media marketing campaign is to increase revenue from sales of products or services or, for a charitable organization, increase donations.

What could the memes have done to produce more community offline action?

• Memes could have been created to spread the word about mammograms saving lives. They could have asked women to post pictures after a mammogram appointment with a similar message.
• The memes could have asked women to name as many risk factors as possible about breast cancer and tag a friend to add another.
• Women or men could post images with stories about their fight or a loved one’s fight with breast cancer.

Although the meme may have fallen short of successful audience mobilization, one can still argue any message that raises awareness about a deadly disease has potential benefit to the cause.