With December now here, many men will have reached for their razor and shaved off the moustache they grew over the previous month for ‘Movember’.
The initiative started in Australia in the mid-2000s and has expanded greatly since then. The Movember Foundation, the charity behind the campaign, has raised hundreds of millions for men’s health programmes focusing on prostate cancer and testicular cancer, among others.
But is it time for the charity to slightly reinvent itself?
YouGov’s CharityIndex data indicates that the campaign is losing its impact on the public as time wears on.
The Word of Mouth Exposure score measures whether someone has discussed the charity with family, friends or colleagues over the past two weeks. Our historic data indicates that, while the charity still sees a solid improvement in this metric each November, its score has declined year-on-year since 2014.
This has been mirrored by a decline in those noticing adverts promoting the initiative, as measured by the Ad Awareness score. This metric measures whether people have noticed an advert by the charity during the previous fortnight. Again, although there is a big uplift across the month, it does fall below the level seen in the previous two years – 6% compared to 7% in 2015 and 12% in 2014.
The charity has broadened its promotional and marketing activities in an effort to counteract this malaise. Last month, it encouraged men to ‘Move for Movember’, placing a greater emphasis on physical activity while they fundraise.
The challenge for next year is to capitalise on the wonderful position it has built for itself in previous years, and harness it in an original way that recaptures the imagination and keeps the funds rolling in.
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