For World Cancer Day, Coppafeel! and Animade launch a campaign reminding young people to check their chests

Coinciding with World Cancer Day, CoppaFeel! – the London-based breast cancer awareness charity – has collaborated with animation studio Animade in launching a breast cancer awareness campaign. Titled Stop and Coppafeel!, the campaign is aimed at young adults particularly, featuring a collection of illustrations and animations reminding its audience to take the time and examine their chests.

Working alongside Sister Music on the sound design, the all-female team devised three different animations, each highlighting the quick and easy process of checking yourself for breast cancer. “CoppaFeel! takes a positive and proactive approach to breast cancer awareness, which was a huge inspiration when designing this campaign,” says Eilidh Reid, creative at Animade. “It was important for us to strike a balance between youthful and impactful, with the right amount of humour to empower young people to get to know their body better. To a generation of procrastinators, myself included, our Stop and Coppafeel! message highlights that checking your chest is quick, easy and can save your life.”

Through a series of colourful idents, the team worked to develop a selection of characters within the frame by frame animations, “to make the characters and movements that felt organic and relatable,” says Reid. The CoppaFeel!’s brand colours were applied, with blues, purples, fuchsias and oranges driving the palette and direction of the aesthetic. “We were keen to squeeze every ounce of character we could into these stories to connect as widely as possible.”

Sister Music – a London-based team of music supervisors, producers, commercial artists and composers – was briefed to design the story’s sound. “With the help of Sister Music, we have created relatable scenes and injected humour and drama to appeal to our audience,” says Reid on the music’s specifics. “Every aspect of the project was crated to feel playful and lighthearted to support a serious message.”

Due to the currently Covid-19 pandemic, many have been putting off a trip to the doctors and attendance is at an all-time low. CoppaFeel! and Animade address this news through a series of everyday scenarios, derived to highlight the importance of checking your chest tissue. “The visual trigger feels particularly relevant in the current situation, as CoppaFeel! had highlighted that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, young people are less likely to attend the doctor if they are worried about a change to their chest,” says Reid. “Brainstorming boob-like objects and visual puns was a hilarious challenge that the team and I enjoyed immensely.”

The ethos behind the campaign rests in the fact that both CoppaFeel! and Animade do not discriminate by age, gender or race, which gave great importance to the design of diverse characters. In one of its most recent Instagram posts, CoppaFeel! highlights that, every year in the UK, 400 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Additionally, two in five young people are avoiding the NHS to due to coronavirus, as stated on Instagram with regards to its latest research.

This, combined with a friendly aesthetic, makes the information easier to digest. “I do think there is an extra layer of thought that needs to be put into projects that surround serious subjects like breast cancer, to make sure they’re treated with care and respect,” says Frida Ek, creative director at Animade. “Our goal from the very beginning was to create something that would be fun to watch but would also connect with people and inspire some action. After all, it’s so easy to forget, but something that is so important to do and literally takes no time at all! And that is the simple but vital message we’ve been wanting to push with this playful campaign, making it the rubdown reminder that people are missing from their schedule.”