Melanoma is one of the most dangerous and fast-growing forms of skin cancer with up to 11 000 new cases registered in Russia every year. The problem of late diagnosis remains the most pressing one. Every fifth patient consults a doctor at terminal stage. If treated early, melanoma can be cured in 90% of cases. However, due to fears and denial, people avoid doing check-ups.

It is extremely important to overcome natural barriers towards conversations around melanoma and to draw attention to the late diagnosis issue without being abusive and scary. So, our main objective was to build trustful communication with the audience delivering strong key messages about melanoma and its prevention and encouraging self-examination.

Curiosity is apparently the driving force behind human progress. Therefore, we decided to base the campaign’s challenge solution on this unique human trait. We were inspired by the objects that mankind had been studying throughout its history and interest to which still did not disappear – by the stars. We discovered that Russian audience were frequently searching for ‘stars constellations’ in Internet. The interest to the stars (macrocosm) was considerably higher than one to body (microcosm) examination, so we decided to convert this interest into caring and careful power which could help to prevent cancer. This is how the star focus on moles was born.

Target Audience

Melanoma is the common type of tumor for people under 30 years, while almost half of all melanomas are found among people older than 50 years. Therefore, our target audience was quite broad: males and females aged from 25 to 60 years old.

Integration & Approach

People are extremely reluctant to do self-examination ignoring even online tools. Fear usually reduces the effectiveness of disease awareness campaigns; so, it was important to attract and to hold attention of people without bringing any pressure. We launched the two-stage tailored integrated communication campaign in order to build trustful communication with the audience and to encourage self-examining seamlessly. We put interactive mechanics and cutting-edge machine-learning technologies at the heart of this creative activation.

Stage 1. On May, 21, 2020 which was the International Space Day and the International Melanoma Diagnosis Day, we launched an interactive online game cosmos.checkyourskin.ru, inviting people to connect dots in the sky, to guess constellations and to learn facts about stars and moles. The launch was extensively supported by leading Russian KOLs and bloggers who informed and invited their audiences to play the game and to visit ABCDE self-test page.

Stage 2. We could not miss the spectacular Perseid meteor shower with culmination on August, 12, 2020, so we continued implementation of the campaign using one of the most advanced technologies - artificial intelligence. Through a special platform stars.checkyourskin.ru users could upload photos of their moles. Once a photo was uploaded, AI started matching moles images with the real constellations and searching for their similarities. At this stage, people were invited to examine carefully their own moles.

Both stages of this star campaign generated a large-scale discussion in social media and attracted high attention of influencers. The campaign was widely discussed across media channels bringing numerous people to the self-test platforms; therefore, the total results were beyond the stars.

• 13 million people – total reach.

• 261 263 visits of both platforms: cosmos.checkyourskin.ru and stars.checkyourskin.ru.

• 65 994 people in total visited ABCDE-test page for melanoma self-diagnosis.

• At the first stage 53 195 people launched the game.

• At the second stage 48 511 people uploaded photos and received feedbacks on similarities of their own moles and existing constellations in the Universe.

• The number of appointments for primary consultation significantly increased. Almost 1 200 people finished the user journey with intention to make a diagnostics appointment with a doctor.