Based on BCUK’s behaviour change strategy, targeting those least likely to recognise and act on possible symptoms, our challenge was to develop an attention-grabbing campaign that would connect with these audiences – prompting them to consider visiting their GP if they’re experiencing symptoms.
Our audience weren’t connecting their symptoms to bowel cancer, and if they were, they’d often find it too embarrassing to talk about them. ‘Tell Your GP Instead’ aims to get people to notice these symptoms by inserting them unexpectedly into everyday conversation, and in doing so, help to normalise the act of talking about them.
The resulting campaign is light-hearted in tone, while landing some gentle urgency to act and without trivialising the issue. The support messaging needed to be reassuring, provide hope around the treatments and provide clarity on what to do. By giving people the language to use with their doctor and reinforcing their permission to act, we hoped to help overcome their embarrassment to seek out support.
Visually, we developed an illustrated approach that’s vibrant and eye-catching, working with illustrator Lenè Van Heerden to bring the campaign to life. This allowed us to inject some personality into the characters while keeping the visuals clean and direct, so people could understand the message quickly.
The campaign was rolled out nationally across print, OOH, digital and radio.
Results of the campaign:
🤨 6 in 10 people exposed to the campaign recall at least one element of it.
📈 Between March 2024 and March 2025, there was a 3% increase in people contacting their GP after experiencing blood in their poo.
👍 After being exposed to the campaign, 84% of our target audience have said they were very likely to contact the GP if they have symptoms.
🫢 Fewer of our target audience report embarrassment as a barrier to contacting their GP about bowel cancer symptoms – from 19.9% in March 2024 to 8.5% in February 2025.
🧪 GPs in campaign locations are reporting an increased use of faecal immunochemical tests (FIT).
🩺 1 in 3 GPs who were aware of the campaign recall a patient mentioning it when presenting with symptoms
💻 There was a 228% uplift in traffic to BCUK’s key webpages on symptoms
