No red lines for cancer campaigns: Shock factor at work in charities’ ads

THERE’S no shortage of shock — or to be polite — emotive charity advertisements over which ethics pundits, the taste police, and media students can keep themselves busy. 

Examples drawn from around the Western world include a cockroach emerging from a baby’s mouth (child poverty), a toddler injecting himself with heroin (a children’s charity), and a naked man apparently copulating with a giant crab (AIDS). Ireland’s latest contribution to the shockvertising debate comes from the Irish Cancer Society (ICS), whose 2017 two-part awareness and fundraising campaign advertisement features a young woman saying firstly: “I want to get cancer.” In the second part, she’s revealed as a scientist telling readers and viewers: “I want to get cancer… before it gets you.”