'Balls In Your Face' Prostate Cancer Awareness Project Hopes To Emulate Success Of Breast Cancer Campaign
The American Cancer Society is stepping up its campaign to raise awareness and funding for prostate cancer research with a new program that encourages Americans to "join the race against prostate cancer -- support 'Balls In Your Face'."
Drawing from a successful breast cancer awareness campaign, in which photos of ample female chests were used to remind men of the importance of boobs, promoters of the BIYF campaign say they will be posting images of "the biggest, hairiest ballsacks you ever saw" on billboards and posters everywhere.
"We are truly excited about this campaign," said Thomas Barrett of the American Cancer Society. "I can't imagine a better way to galvanize female support for prostate cancer research than by showing them pictures of huge boners and sweaty testicles."
Barrett and his team have even garnered the support of famous athlete and prostate cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, who will have his own billboard erected on highways across the nation. It features a smiling Armstrong with an enormous bulge in his spandex, along with the headline, "Have a ball! Support prostate and testicular cancer research today."
Taking another celebrity angle, a series of test ads run in the Chicago area -- sporting pictures of the shafts and balls of a number of celebrities and underscored by the text "Think Long and Hard About Supporting Prostate Cancer Research" -- have received a positive response so far.
"During a day-trip to the city, my family and I were surprised and delighted to see this amazing cancer awareness poster," said Dana Murphy of Crown Point, Indiana. "My husband and seven year-old twin daughters just had to stop and admire the eight or ten images of celebrity cocks -- whose they were, I guess we'll never know, though I bet the one on the bottom left was Johnny Depp's -- and it made me think about the urgent need for a cure for prostate cancer, so our men's love muscles don't start falling off."
Not all responses to the new campaign have been positive, however. Some men have complained that the program objectifies the male figure, while others say the images are too harsh and provocative for the public forum.
"I think these posters are beautiful, but my ten-year-old daughter here doesn't seem to agree!" joked one man standing next to a series of the posters, as his crying daughter covered her eyes in terror.
Nevertheless, it is exactly that kind of intense emotional response that the promoters of BIYF are seeking. Brett Sloman of the Specialty Advertising Company, the firm that's executing the creative vision behind the ads, says that overall, he expects most people to enthusiastically support the stimulating message: increase prostate cancer research.
"If you aren't moved by the image of a ballsack that has obviously been swinging all day between the pumping legs of a hard-working, sweaty American man, then you don't have a heart," said Sloman. "We're proud of our ads so far -- proud in a way that a particularly well-endowed man is proud of his enormous, cancer-free penis."
Sloman added that plans are in the works to combine the prostate cancer message with the existing breast cancer message, perhaps by "combining the two images in a way that makes sense and feels good."
