The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
Highlight Your Balls turns football clips into self-checks — Lynx Grand Prix for Good
Men skip self-check tutorials but devour football highlights; FP7 McCann hid exam lessons in mid-rolls before free kicks — 42M impressions.
Testicular Cancer Society
What it had to solve
About 1 in 250 men develops testicular cancer in a lifetime and early detection sharply raises survival, yet men aged 15–35 skip self-check tutorials — they find them boring and cringe. The US-based Testicular Cancer Society and FP7 McCann Dubai needed to teach the check inside content this audience actually watches: football highlights.
How it works
Testicular cancer is highly treatable when found early — about one in 250 men develops it in a lifetime — yet the videos teaching self-examination are exactly the content young men skip: boring, awkward tutorials. The Testicular Cancer Society and its Dubai agency FP7 McCann spotted the mismatch and looked for a place where men already pay close attention to their crotch area: football.
The campaign's idea was to hijack the highlight reel. Using YouTube mid-rolls that play just before a free kick, the ad showed players in the defending wall doing what defenders always do — shielding their groins — then quietly performing the two-minute self-check while a commentator-style voiceover explained each step. Actors wore the exact kit colours of the teams in the surrounding clips, and voice artists recorded in German, Italian, Japanese, English, Arabic and Portuguese so the mid-roll matched the league and region.
From only five jerseys, three actors and a green screen, the team produced more than 100 clips, and the same lessons ran inside live Talksport commentary and YouTube livestreams around free-kick setups. The April 2024 push earned 42 million impressions and a 45% lift in visits to the Testicular Cancer Society's website, then took the Dubai Lynx 2025 Grand Prix for Good and a Cannes Silver Lion for Brand Experience & Activation — proof that a health message can borrow the audience's own ritual instead of fighting it.
Why it lands
- It met men where they already are: inside football highlights, not in an interruption they would skip.
- Timing carried the lesson — the self-check played at the exact moment players' hands were already near the groin, making the behaviour feel natural.
- Localisation made one production global: six commentary languages and team-matched kits made the mid-roll feel like part of the broadcast.
- It treated embarrassment as the enemy: by mirroring the genre men love, the check stopped being cringe and became part of the game.
What it did
Launched for April's men's health month, the campaign delivered 42 million impressions and a 45% increase in visits to the Testicular Cancer Society website. It took the Dubai Lynx 2025 Grand Prix for Good and a Silver Lion for Brand Experience & Activation.
What you can take
Health messages fail when they interrupt the audience's world; place the lesson inside content men already watch, timed to the moment they are most engaged, and the check becomes part of the game.
Since then
After April 2024, the campaign stayed the Testicular Cancer Society's most visible push, circulating as an industry example of health creativity. Its recognition — a Silver Lion for Brand Experience at Cannes and the Grand Prix for Good at Dubai Lynx 2025 — rewarded placing a two-minute habit inside content that already had millions of viewers rather than funding a separate PSA. The founder's point, that digital tools blurred the line between content and messaging, set the charity's direction toward riding existing sports content instead of fighting for attention.
Sources
- Testicular Cancer Society Asks Men to Check Their Balls During the Football
- Highlight Your Balls — McCann Worldgroup @ Cannes
- All the 2025 Dubai Lynx Awards
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