Testicular cancer is the most common form of cancer affecting New Zealand men aged 18-35. Prevention is as simple as a regular self-check. But the message wasn’t getting through to young men. As a charity, Testicular Cancer New Zealand faced the challenge of how to get their message out to the masses on a very limited budget. We wanted to draw attention to the issue on a national scale and drive home the message about just how simple the self-check process is. But we also knew that any attempt to be too graphic or go into too much detail and the campaign would be shut out by the national media. We needed to create a media friendly idea that would be willingly picked up.

We created The Testimatic, the world’s first automatic ball-checking ‘machine’ - Because if you’re not going to check them, someone needs to. That’s right. We invented a machine that checks men’s balls. How does it work? Where does it work? That interest is what we were counting on. The secret to the Testimatic is the doctor inside who performs simple physical examinations on men’s testicles – the same process any man can follow at home. Want to find out more? Luckily, so did the public.

Unlike most traditional PR campaigns, we couldn’t rely on an expensive partnership, or any paid media to compliment PR in spreading our message. We relied solely on the audaciousness of our idea, and a handful of carefully selected journalists and media personalities.

By creating the Testimatic we were presenting the topic of checking testicles in a fun, entertaining and publicly acceptable manner. By inviting media personalities to experience The Testimatic for themselves and actually participate in the story, rather than just cover it, we created a PR platform that could reach the entire nation across every news network and media channel.

We launched our ‘machine’ at NZ’s largest expo for men, fittingly called Big Boys Toys. But as we’ve said, actually touching balls was only part of the plan. We wanted to touch men everywhere – with our message. NZ’s most high-profile male journalists had their own personal inspections live on air on their respective news and current affairs programmes. The Testimatic was the lead story on all three of NZ’s news networks on the opening day of Big Boys Toys. Then we opened our booth to the public. Over the next 24 hours the story of the Testimatic swept around the globe and touched millions more.