Cancer is happening right now.

Probably the work I feel closest to and proudest of. The Cancer Research “Right now” campaign was about take Cancer from something that felt far away and hard to solve, to something more immediate and everyday.

There was so much in how we made this that defied how work is usually made in this industry.

Our objective to create immediacy meant we even took ourselves out of parts of the process to be able to afford to make more content. The conventional rules of craft didn’t apply, and benefited the authenticity of the work. And yet it was the most creatively fulfilling process.

We created dozens of beautiful stories of patients. Many of which have never seen the light of day. Sometimes for sad reasons. Sometimes just from complication. The volume seen here is part of a much larger amount we had to create to ensure we got enough stories for the issue to feel like it happened yesterday.

The campaign ran for four years and moved metrics the charity had never been able to shift before.

Following our brief to create immediacy, we wanted to create a PR spike that was the most immediate thing we could do – find and treat cancer live, in the moment.

So we devised a live colonoscopy. We found an amazing doctor who was willing to work with a patient on finding, isolating and removing a cancerous polyp, all in a 90 second live commercial. Easily the most stressful 5 minutes of my career.

Cancer Research were also an incredibly brave client. Sometimes our briefs weren’t to promote the brand, but promote an important piece of health information.

When people were asked what the highest preventable causes of cancer were, obesity came far down the list. when in fact it was number two after smoking (now number one).

Our job was simply to make this information stick. We did this in two ways. First, by getting people to figure it out.

We also created notoriety by finding it shared many placements alongside fast food. Part of this brief was also about lobbying the government around clearer junk food labelling, especially towards kids.

The second part of this campaign pushed much more intentionally on food packaging. We worked hard with Cancer Research and their PR and legal team over a three year period to find the right political moment that this could happen.