Our key objective was to engage a wider community beyond just women diagnosed with ovarian cancer; getting people to care about a disease they know nothing about and is silently killing 5 Canadian women every day.

We identified there was a lack of directness in communication around “intimate” female topics. So we needed to shift ovaries away from a clinical and medical subject matter to something women feel comfortable talking about openly.

Ovaries were hard to talk about and weren’t top of mind because, unlike men, women can’t see, touch or feel their gonads.

So, we positioned ovaries as female “balls” as they represented the same bravery as their male counterparts, championing the courage it takes to fight women’s most fatal cancer. It’d make ovaries powerful enough to enter the mainstream cultural conversation. It’d make ovaries stand for courage and boldness or, Ladyballs. Which got us thinking.

Women needed a reminder: they had balls too. Ladyballs.

Having Ladyballs was a call to action against the silent killer, as well a testament to the grit, courage and strength it takes to battle women’s most fatal cancer.

The work launched nationally with film in TV, digital pre-roll and social video. Print and radio executions featuring survivors and their ‘Ladyballs’ stories of courage soon followed.

Next, ‘Show us your Ladyballs’, a user-generated content activation was deployed in social media, as well as digital and search advertising. We encouraged fans to socially share their ladyballs by displaying a physical sign of support.

Community outreach and Digital PR efforts brought ‘Ladyballs’ into online conversation during high profile events like the Oscars.

Ladyballs trade materials were created for the medical community.

By focusing less on the clinical story and instead talking about ovarian cancer in a comfortable, colloquial way, we established a breakthrough, culturally relevant term that had never been initiated before. Ladyballs was able to help overcome the organization’s non-existent share of voice and low awareness by creating a national conversation around a killer that was not only misunderstood, but had previously never been discussed. Ladyballs kick started a

cultural conversation about ovaries, ovarian cancer and even gender equality.

This speaks to the cultural importance of what the Ladyballs campaign did for those closest to the campaign too. There was a deliberate organizational approach to change the conversation around ovarian cancer in a bold way – one that empowered everyone to talk about something that had largely been ignored.

Ladyballs made the OCC organization, and its supporters and survivors, more fearless. It gave them an edge and spirit that rejuvenated their fight. They felt silenced for so long that this finally allowed them to speak out with a courage, strength and determination that they’d never tapped into before.