Today I got a message from one of my friends to post where you like to leave your purse as your Facebook status.  It’s a follow-up to the bra color trend that overtook Facebook last year in honor of breast cancer awareness.  I immediately sent it out to a horde of my female friends, then saw that one of my male buddies had posted a remark about how it doesn’t make sense and he’d rather people just donate to breast cancer research:

Why are girls playing another cryptic “game” to raise awareness about Breast Cancer? It worked last time because it actually had something to do with breasts (bra color), but this one (where you put your bookbag/purse) is just a ploy. You want to raise awareness? Donate and tell a friend to donate at www.komen.org and actually make a difference. I donated in honor of my Mom, the strongest woman and survivor I know.

To me, he completely missed the point of the potential that doing something as simple as this can have.  You don’t raise awareness just by putting money towards a cause – that’s merely funding it.  Raising awareness is to get dozens of others to think about the issue and get involved in their own way, whether through donating, volunteering, or otherwise.  That is so much more powerful than just donating money yourself and asking your friends to do so too.  To make something viral, it has to be more than just the usual message and this is something that gets people talking, whether they are baffled yet again at what is going on, or explaining what those “I like it” posts are about.

So here was the rest of our exchange:

Me:  Hey, it got you to talk. And what else can be said about breasts after bras? The idea is just to make people think about it, which should in turn get them to act and/or donate.

Him:  To think about it, it shouldn’t be some kind of secret game that men can’t play. That eliminates half the possible donating population. Instead of it just being a game, we should be encouraging each other to really make a difference.

Me:  Only by making it a game does it catch a virus effect that can make it spread fast. Unfortunately traditional “hey you should donate to ____ cause” just doesn’t catch people’s attention. There are thousands of great causes and you gotta get creative with how you approach it. The secrecy lets women have some fun with it and men try to find out, which gets them involved too.

Maybe it shouldn’t be limited to something just women can participate in, but seeing as most cases of breast cancer are women, it makes sense that they are the ones who are allowed to lead this little campaign. Nothing wrong with a “ploy” if it’s meant to get people talking about an important issue like this. After all, every advertisement is just a ploy for your attention, much like this is.

I believe it’s a matter of taking this to the next step.  Yes, it would be silly and foolish to just leave it at that, with no explanation.  I was actually thinking of setting up a Facebook page to help explain, but getting enough people to it for it to be worthwhile would be difficult.  I think the best thing would be for the Komen Foundation or another breast cancer awareness group to pick it up and each year come up with the theme, which is distributed virally.  A week into Breast Cancer Awareness Month, all those in the know who had changed their statuses would then all change their status to something like “Join me in supporting breast cancer awareness by going to komen.org and donating to the cause!”  The rest of the world, if they hadn’t caught on already, would then have a clear follow-up to the previously mysterious status messages.

And here was another person who wasn’t so sure about this whole thing:

I’m not saying this isn’t creative but will posting where you put your purse really cause people to think of breast cancer though? At least bras were directly connected to breasts but I know a lot of people who didn’t even know what the point of that was..

sorry, i’m done ranting. don’t let me stop you from doing it though, if you really think it’ll put the message across.

And my response:

One of my friends wasn’t fond of it either and he said he’d rather people just go donate at komen.org, but I think that this is a good idea if after a few days of the status being up, everyone switches to something like “Support Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Donate at komen.org” And my thoughts on your friends points:

Traditional ways of putting the message across don’t get your attention like this kind of thing has the potential for. It is very viral, and therefore very powerful by putting the power in the hands of each participant to get involved and get others involved.