Breast Cancer Foundation NZ launches new campaign ‘Save your life. Rinse. Repeat’ ~ directed by Taika Waititi via Special New Zealand

Breast Cancer Foundation NZ has launched ‘Save your life. Rinse. Repeat’ via Special, directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi.

The deliberately steamy film is designed to make breast self-checking part of women’s everyday shower routine, bridging the gap between knowing to perform a self-breast check and doing it.

Waititi was approached by Special with a brief that needed a very specific kind of director, someone who could handle a sensitive health subject with humour, nuance and cultural relevance, without losing the message.

Waititi, who also joined the campaign in-kind, then assembled a crew most never get to work with: Ra Vincent, the Oscar-nominated production designer behind Jojo Rabbit, created the set. Curious Film produced it, and actor Xavier Garneau-Roughan leads the film.

Special New Zealand shaped the recent survey commissioned by Breast Cancer Foundation NZ that informed the strategy, conceived the idea, and carried it all the way through creative, production and advertising as a philanthropic effort from the agency and all partners. Its PR arm then turbocharged its reach with a three-tier influencer programme, rallying Breast Cancer Foundation NZ’s ambassadors, earned creators and paid talent to flood the feed, backed by a strategic global earned media push that took the message well beyond New Zealand.

The goal is zero deaths from breast cancer, and finding it early is critical to achieving it because it gives women the best chance of successful treatment and survival. The idea emerged after the survey of 1,000 women found that almost all New Zealand women (94%) agree regular breast checking is important, but 82% say it is easy to forget. Only 37% had checked in the past month, and nearly seven in ten said nothing in their routine reminds them to do it.

The shower became the answer. More than half of the women who had checked said that’s where they last did it, but it still wasn’t working as a regular prompt, so the Foundation made breast self-checking in the shower something women are unlikely to forget.

The result is a deliberately steamy, cinematic film: a very slow, very soapy shower, with a straightforward instruction to women watching that while they’re in the shower, they may as well have a feel for themselves.

The 60” hero spot leads the campaign across TV, Cinema, BVOD, SVOD, radio, and social, with support from OOH and digital placements led by media buying agency PHD.

The idea also extends beyond traditional media through to contextual placements such as in gym showers where women are more likely to act in the moment. Glow Lab has added breast-check reminders to its entire 900ml body wash range, putting the prompt in bathrooms nationwide from launch day.

Says Waititi: “Breast cancer has affected many people in my life, including my mother and mother-in-law, so my involvement in this project was never in question. We set out to create something entertaining that also carries an important message – check your breasts.”

Says Vanessa Sorenson, CEO of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ: “Working with Special has been incredible. From the very first conversation, they challenged us to think differently about a problem we’ve been working on for a long time. Bringing Taika on board was a real coup, and the whole Special team has been an extraordinary partner, bold in their thinking, meticulous in the craft, and deeply respectful of what this cause means to so many New Zealanders.”

Says Bethany Omeri, Special Head of Strategy, Special: “Women already know breast checking is an important thing to do, but it’s easy for it to fall off their already very long to-do list. Women told us they couldn’t carve out more time for yet another thing, so we wanted to repurpose one of their existing precious moments of ‘me time’. The shower also conveniently provides the perfect conditions for this life-saving act.

Says Lisa Fedyszyn, Special Chief Creative Officer, Special: “There’s no one time of day that works for every woman. We have different jobs, families, routines and lives. But we all have a shower, just thankfully not at the same time. So instead of asking women to remember one more thing, we wanted to attach breast checking to something they already do. “Save your life. Rinse. Repeat”. We hope it makes checking breasts as routine as washing them, and ultimately helps change, and save, New Zealand women’s lives.”

Breast Cancer Foundation NZ:
Vanessa Sorenson, CEO
Ah-leen Rayner, Former CEO
Jacquie Jardine, Marketing & Engagement Manager
Jessica Seal, Marketing Lead
Amylousie Miller, Corporate Partnership Manager
Pui-Yi Cheng, Strategic Communications & PR Manager
Nicky Sinclair-Perkins, Head of Fundraising and Engagement

Special
Tony Bradbourne, Founder & CEO
Lisa Fedyszyn, Chief Creative Officer
Jonathan McMahon, Chief Creative Officer
Steve Hansen, Creative Director
Sam Taunton-Clark, Creative
James O’Sullivan, Creative
Bethany Omeri, Head of Strategy
Ursula Nichols-London, Group Strategy Director
Oliva Jackson, Business Director
Liz Garneau, Executive Producer

Special PR
Kelly Grindle, Managing Director
Julianna Permitin, Senior PR Director
Jessica Walker, Senior PR Manager
Kale Dixon, Senior PR Executive

Director: Taika Waititi
Production Company: Curious Film
Producer: Matt Noonan
Director of Photography: Bayley Broome-Peake
Production Designer: Ra Vincent
Editor(s): Luke Haigh and Hayden Weal
Colour: Alana Cotton, Images & Sound
VFX: Creature Post
Photographer: Mara Sommer
Retoucher: Cameron Jones
Sound: Andy Morton, Liquid Studios
Studio: Studio West – Ariki Group
Talent: Xavier Garneau-Roughan

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