You’ve Seen Planking, Now Introducing #Mamming – The New Meme Craze for Breast Cancer Awareness
By Jack Field on Monday, October 28, 2013
You’ve seen planking, the popular meme which spread across the internet featuring people posing horizontally in various improbable locations. Since then you’ve seen owling, teapotting and even hadoukening, and now we have a new craze – mamming; encouraging individuals to “rest their clothed breasts” on flat objects (much like one has to in a mammogram) and tweet the photo with the hashtag #mamming. However, this isn’t just another meme for people to show their ingenuity – mamming is being used to help raise awareness of breast cancer.
The brainchild of Michelle Jaret and Michelle Lamont the initiative was conjured when Lamont, a breast cancer survivor and ad-agency executive, was looking at ideas to help raise the profile of mammograms and to inspire people to get their breasts checked out early if the suspect they have a problem. At the heart of this campaign is the aim to reduce the stigma associated with mammograms and to show women from around the globe that this is an important issue and one that should not be ignored due to being embarrassed or scared. The tagline is strong too – Embracing the Awkwardness – and it goes straight to the heart of the problem; people avoiding getting important checks due to the awkwardness of approaching the subject.
This campaign is mainly a social media initiative, with people being encouraged to tweet images of themselves and to go and get a check-up – then to share the image and promote the campaign, increasing discussion on the subject – but has also picked up widespread coverage across national and broadcast outlets across the globe. It is a perfect example of how a simple, fun idea, can create widespread cut-through and really affect the public’s perspective on a topic that people often look to avoid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbP4h8Jud4A
For more info on mamming, check out www.thisismamming.com and get involved!
