"Dead Ideaville"

I've just finished the first sentence of "The Dead" by James Joyce. And speaking of, here's a brand new arrival in Dead Ideaville. Let's give a warm, or rather cold welcome to the Prostate Cancer Charity (PCC) in Britain.

Every March in Britain is Prostate Awareness Month. The PCC likes to use the month to push their message that Prostate Cancer is a major hidden killer of men, indeed a man dies every hour.

For next year's awareness month they wanted something extra buzz worthy with a dash of non-traditional thrown in. Why do I keep falling for this!!!

Prostate Cancer Charity - "Hidden Voices"

The idea was to create a campaign, designed to spark maximum intrigue and chatter, whereby Prostate Cancer Awareness Month is the big reveal.

In other words, let’s begin a mysterious campaign sometime before the official start of the awareness month, thereby allowing its start to be the big payoff.

To really hit home the “hidden threat” of Prostate Cancer, we would bring it to life as a threatening, cryptic persona that is around you, but you can’t see it. It warns you of the damage it can cause and dares you to stop it, without revealing what it is.

But rather than a visual approach we would take an aural approach. Thus, the hidden presence of Prostate Cancer would be in the form of threatening voices that reach out across the airwaves to sound their warning about how deadly and destructive they can be to men, families and communities.

So how exactly would it work?
During a pre-determined time before the start of Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, people all around Britain would hear, but not see mysterious threatening voices that are very much present around them.

In the busiest shopping centers, business centers, sporting stadiums, cinema theatres, the airspace would be penetrated by these voices. They would be live and call out actual people on the ground to prove that they are present. Here is a sample of what the voices could sound like:

  “I just killed a man and like you he didn’t see me coming. One less husband. One less father. One less brother. One less friend on Facebook. And in an hour I will kill another. And another, sixty minutes after that. You there in the green shirt, yes I talking to you, what are you going to do to stop me? That’s right look up. Look left. How are you going to stop me if you can’t even see me.”

To support this mysterious campaign we would initiate a social media dialogue. A Facebook page, “Have you seen the voices?” would be started. It would document all the places where the voices are being heard as well become the venue where users can share filmed footage of this "strange phenomenon. Twitter feeds could also report on where exactly these voices are being heard.

Then on the first day of Prostate Cancer Awareness Month the voices would cease and the reveal begins. A series of trucks branded with Prostate Cancer Charity signage would tour the country in the very areas where the voices are being heard. Fitted with loud speakers, the charity would make people “aware” of what exactly these voices represent.

In effect the Prostate Cancer Charity would become the calming, reassuring voice, explaining what can be done to fight back against the hidden threats of prostate cancer.

Unfortunately no one was able to see the growing hidden threat of timidity in the client until it was too late. A little ironic really that a charity set up to prevent deaths could so easily inflict some of its own.