Bottle Openers Against Prostate Cancer!
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This month is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. It used to be a Week but anything breast cancer charities do, prostate cancer charities blithely copy. No-one except me and one or two others seem to consider breast cancer charities might ever be wrong on awareness. So now we've got a prostate cancer Month.
As previous posts show, cancer awareness has, in my view, become unfit for purpose. Its purpose should be helping unaffected people understand their own health and modify their risk factors where they can. But now it’s about raising brand awareness not cancer or health awareness - fundraising for organisations, not health promotion to people.
How else would you explain the following?
I’ve just come back from Marks and Spencer who add some profile to Prostate Cancer Awareness Month - much as they do in Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. And there I saw a £2 bottle opener on sale because “M and S is proud to support The Prostate Cancer Charity”. Through the sale of two quid bottle openers. So the bottle openers are supporting the charity through fundraising, not raising health awareness in men. Good. I've got that clear.
So health awareness is a synonym for brand awareness, but I press on.
A bottle opener? Why not a key ring or lapel pin? Or a little nut cracker? - Brazil nuts contain selenium which might be protective against prostate cancer- or a novelty spanner, screwdriver or bookmark? Even a little model apricot - which is an odd idea (and probably not worth pursuing) but when you know that an apricot is, more or less, the size and shape of a prostate it might make more sense?
If you considered prostate cancer in context you would shy away from ‘bottle opener’ as the ideal vehicle for prostate cancer awareness. And you'd also grasp that, as the market leader in male health issues, prostate cancer makes a suitable Trojan horse in which to smuggle explict and subliminal general messages on men's health, to men. Hence the novelty nutcracker idea. I don't mean The Prostate Cancer Charity should suddenly start delivering heart, digestive disease, or 'other' cancer health promotion. They should be thinking of the whole of men's health, adding value to all sorts of others' efforts in promoting health to men.
Prostate is only one of the cancers men might get, is only one of the wider issues that men face with their health. If you saw prostate cancer as men’s health in a wider context a bottle opener would be the last PR trinket with which you'd want to spread your message.
I am not suggesting that a bottle opener promotes excess drinking, but an alcohol abuse charity would not use such a thing for their PR. It would look wrong. But in exactly the same way they look wrong as a promotional nick nack in a cancer awareness month for men.
So - nix the bottle opener.
Like alcohol abuse charities, other cancer charities would also avoid bottle openers as a promotional novelty. Excess alcohol increases the risks of cancers of the mouth, oesophagus, pharynx, and larynx, colorectal cancer, liver cancer and stomach cancer in men and women. The evidence of a link between higher alcohol consumption and prostate cancer is inconsistent - there in some studies, not in others, so it cannot be confidently dismissed as irrelevant.
Just because excess alcohol might be unconnected to prostate cancer doesn't let them off. The fact that prostate cancer is a) a hign profile 'men only' condition and b), a cancer, means that The Prostate Cancer Charity is obliged to back up other cancer charities' cancer messaging to men, not fail to spot it - or even decide to ignore it. It doesn't do men any good for a men's health charity to appear to think 'Doesn't matter to us, alcohol's not our issue, mate.' This is where messages from these 'one cancer at a time, please' awareness months subvert each other, to the detriment of the audience.
Doesn't help men much, does it?
As it represents a high profile men's health issue the charity should add value to the wider field of men’s health and show solidarity with the lower profile cancers that men can get that are linked to alcohol - The Prostate Cancer Charity is attempting to influence the same audience of men, in case they hadn't noticed! And forhevinsake, show some nous about the huge toll that alcohol takes on men’s physical and mental wellbeing.
Do I think I should lighten up? No. I don’t.
So, naturally, I turn now to the evidence on men and alcohol related harm.
The folowing is extracted from Statistics on Alcohol, England 2009, Published 20 May 2009
Drinking related costs, ill health and mortality
- In 2007 sixteen per cent of men who had drunk in the last year said they would like to drink less.
- In 2007, 33 per cent of men were classified as hazardous drinkers.
- Six per cent of men were estimated to be harmful drinkers, the most serious form of hazardous drinking, which means that damage to health is likely.
- Among adults aged 16 to 74, nine per cent of men showed some signs of alcohol dependence. The prevalence of alcohol dependence is slightly lower for men than it was in 2000 when 11.5 per cent of men showed some signs of dependence.
- In 2007/08 there were 863,300 alcohol related admissions to hospital. This is an increase of 69 per cent since 2002/03 when there were 510,200 alcohol related admissions and 62 per cent of alcohol related admissions were for men. Among both men and women there were more admissions in the older age groups than in the younger age groups
- In England in 2007, there were 134,429 prescription items for drugs for the treatment of alcohol dependency prescribed in primary care settings or NHS hospitals and dispensed in the community. This is an increase of 31 per cent since 2003 when there were 102,741 prescription items.
- In 2007, in England, there were 6,541 deaths directly related to alcohol this has increased by 19 per cent since 2001. Of these alcohol related deaths, the majority (4,249) died from alcoholic liver disease
- It is estimated that the cost of alcohol related harm to the NHS in England is £2.7 billion in 2006/07 prices.
If Prostate Cancer Awareness Month is to be useful as health promotion it should be about awareness of prostate cancer and men’s health, and not muddle brand awareness of The Prostate Cancer Charity with it.
I know bottle openers are normal domestic objects .....but of all the choices of novelty wotsit discussed in your marketing department's exciting business breakfasts with M and S, why plump for bottle openers…….?
Next time step away from the bottle opener, Prostate Cancer Charity, step well away from the bottle opener.
