These memes raised awareness, but did they have the desired effect?
By James Green
Awareness is, naturally, a very important early step in influencing behavior change. This is especially true for health causes, such as the fight against breast cancer. That’s why we see products colored pink and sports teams wearing pink uniforms during October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. These types of campaigns are designed to get their audience thinking about the cause, with the hope that they will be mobilized to join the fight and help society to take a more proactive stance.
But sometimes awareness campaigns don’t have all the intended effects.
Memes Can Create Awareness
The book Strategic Social Media: From Marketing to Social Change by L. Meghan Mahoney and Tang Tang presents a controversial case of raising awareness through social media memes. This case, which is an excellent example of internet activism, involved social media marketing campaigns that urged users to share memes on Facebook with the intention of raising awareness of breast cancer.
These memes included:
- Women posting a single color to represent the color of the bra they were wearing.
- Women posting “where they like it,” describing where they like to put their purse with a clear double entendre.
- Women posting a number of inches, ostensibly related to their hair, but again representing a clear double entendre.
According to Mahoney and Tang, these campaigns caught on and were successful at motivating people to get involved by posting memes. But how effective they were at fighting breast cancer is up for debate.
Memes Can Create Controversy
These social media memes were, of course, designed to be provocative and grab attention. And with any provocative marketing campaign, not all reactions were positive. According to Mahoney and Tang, these were some the most prevalent criticisms of the memes:
- The memes tended to sexualize breast cancer, which is obviously going to be controversial.
- The memes didn’t generally provide links to further information to help people take action after their attention was grabbed.
- As memes posted to social media accounts, they required little actual effort or action from those taking part.
- The memes did not fight misconceptions about the disease, such as the notion that only women are effected.
Some of the loudest critics were those who found the campaigns cheap and tawdry. But perhaps even more relevant were complaints that the campaigns did not achieve much, and that they might even be called pointless. Mary Carmichael of Newsweek criticized the bra-color campaign for not being clear enough in its message, for not really being that risqué, for not providing further information, and for generating heavy online backlash. Carmichael went so far as to claim the campaign was really more about social media flirtation than breast cancer awareness.
“This campaign is roughly equivalent to buying something — that just happens to be pink — from a company that gives zero to breast-cancer research, then claiming you’re doing it for medical science. It’s harmless, I guess, but also pointless.”
Mary Carmichael, Newsweek
If Carmichael’s reaction was was any indication, these campaigns probably could have been more effective at fighting breast cancer.
How Can Memes Be More Effective?
Yes, these memes were attention-grabbing. And, of course, breast cancer awareness is a cause worthy of going to extreme lengths to raise awareness. But if the awareness doesn’t lead to any further action, then what was achieved?
It’s certainly a good thing that people who saw the memes were directed to take time out of their busy day to think about breast cancer. And posting attention-grabbing memes are effective at getting a social media marketing message to resonate with audiences who are constantly bombarded with information in the digital age.
But awareness is only an early step in the process of generating behavioral and societal changes. If viewers of the memes weren’t told what they should do to help, and how they could take those steps, it’s open to debate whether the memes were effective at all. After all, most people who viewed the memes surely knew breast cancer existed and was a terrible thing. And many, if not most, probably either knew someone effected by it or were effected by it themselves.
For a social media marketing campaign to be successful, especially when tied to an important social issue, it must do more than simply raise awareness. It must have an impact. According to the University of Florida’s Center for Public Interest Communications, a campaign’s messaging should feature the following elements:
- A call to action: Audiences need to be motivated to take the next steps through personal appeals.
- A plan for change: Audiences must be convinced that taking certain actions will result in the desired outcomes.
- Stories that resonate: Real-life stories of those effected by the issue can have a deep emotional impact and encourage audiences to take action.
The breast-cancer meme campaigns were successful at creating awareness, and they certainly encouraged some action, in the form of posting memes. But after viewing the memes, audiences were left entirely on their own when it came to taking the next steps in contributing to the cause. If the campaigns had incorporated the above elements, they probably would have been more effective at generating real change in the fight against breast cancer.
An effective social media marketing campaign for breast cancer awareness might be better off sharing real, personal, stories about people who were impacted by the disease to create an emotional impact that resonates. It might also provide links to educational materials, breast cancer statistics, and sites that provide advice on ways to help. These elements would encourage audiences to take impactful action, rather than simply puzzling over a cryptic meme before continuing to scroll on.
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