Testicular Cancer Canada is going balls to the wall in a new campaign from Sid Lee for Testicular Cancer Awareness Month.
The organization has partnered with Toronto rock climbing gym Joe Rockhead’s on an awareness program called “Grab Your Rocks,” replacing the handholds on one of its climbing walls with (approximately) life-size replicas of scrotums.
The idea is that as climbers make their way up the wall, the various grip techniques on the handholds—which Testicular Cancer Canada variously describes as “the jug,” “the pinch,” “the crimp,” “the palm,” and “the two-hander”—can help with the early detection of testicular cancer when used with the real thing.
The climbing wall will be in place at Joe Rockhead’s from April 21-30, but Sid Lee has also captured footage for a video running across digital and social. In addition, people can climb a virtual version of the wall at GrabYourRocks.ca.
Sid Lee creative director Matt Fraracci said the goal was to find a distinct and memorable way of addressing the potentially deadly mix of indifference and reluctance that its young male target feels about preventative self-examination.
“It was trying to dismantle some of that thinking in as breakthrough and fun a way as possible,” he said. “I think you can reach people in a very lighthearted way, and still get the point across. They’ve been very realistic about the need to do that.”
The handholds were manufactured by a Pickering, Ont. based company called Mosaic Maker Works, which bills itself as Canada’s leading supplier of locally made and manufactured rock wall handholds (known as volumes).
“We sat with them and said, ‘They need to look this’ or ‘Feel like this,’” said Fraracci. “It’s important that they be to scale, but [climbers] also need to be able to get a grip. It was certainly a very interesting set of meetings.”
Since testicular cancer has a cure rate of 98% if caught early enough, getting men to check for lumps, swelling and atrophy can be important, and humour has a way of resonating with the intended audience of men 18-34.
Humour has been a popular form of communiation over the years, from the Canadian Cancer Society’s “Nutiquette: A dude’s guide to checking his nuts” (featuring a then-unknown Simu Liu singing a ditty about how to check for signs of cancer) to Movember’s long-running awareness campaign, “Know Thy Nuts.”
“Having a light-hearted and humorous campaign about a serious health issue is a great way to break down the taboo and make the conversation surrounding testicular health more approachable,” said Fraracci. “Part of our ambition with this project was making an entertaining and interesting campaign that works like an icebreaker to get men talking about their health.”
