In Dominican Republic Breast Cancer is a serious problem that affects women's lives each year. This is why La Sirena, one of the biggest department stores in the country, for the month of breast cancer awareness (October) wanted to motivate women to perform a self breast exam, knowing that early detection is a big step in winning the fight agains this disease. The problem is that most women stated that they didn't have enough time to preform a self breast exam.

Our idea was to motivate women to do a self exam by giving the time most women say they didn't have. During our research, although women claimed they didn’t have the time, we noticed most of them watch prime time television. So, this meant they were spending time on other things instead. For this, we decided to do a unique negotiation with the Country’s leading TV programs, and their most influential people, to perform a simple live action. A live action that would give women all over the country the time they said they didn't have. We convince the TV shows to end the content of their program a few minutes earlier and stay live on air, to give women that time to do a self exam.

In 2018, La Sirena, Dominican Republic’s biggest retailer, wanted to motivate the number of self-exams in women. But, how could we motivate them to do it? Or more, how could we give them the time they say they didn't have to perform a self exam?

During our research, although women claimed they didn’t have the time, we noticed most of them were big fans of prime time television, watching shows back to back at home. So, this meant they were spending time on other things instead. In order to provide them with an extra window of time to perform a breast self exam. We negotiated with the Country’s leading rated TV programs and their most influential people to perform a simple live action without interrupting their TV routine and without taking them out of their comfort zone.

We did a unique negotiation with the Country’s leading rated TV programs and their most influential people to perform a simple live action that would give women viewers the time they say they don't have.

In October, they would air their programs just like every other month, but with a slight twist: every show needed to end a few minutes earlier. We used this live-air-time to deliver our message. On air, the hosts would exit a few minutes earlier, leaving an empty set with no content to show, and then we urged them to use this time to perform a self-exam. An overlay redirected them to our Facebook account, where they could find a step by step video on how to do it. The video also invited them to our stores, where trained physicians would perform mammograms for free.

Our message was talked about in social media applauding the action. Celebrities echoed our message. Even other shows donated their live air time ending their shows earlier just like we did. The self-exam videos reached over 1 million people on Facebook. More than 4,000 appointments for free mammograms were made on the first day of the action.