Don't Wipe Away the Signs.
A behaviour-first, data-led bowel cancer campaign that turned an everyday moment into a life-saving one.
The Challenge
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in England. Diagnosed early, survival rates are around 90%. Diagnosed at stage four, that figure falls to 10%. The gap between those numbers is awareness, and awareness requires people to talk about something they would rather ignore.
In October 2025, RM Partners and South East London Cancer Alliance commissioned two simultaneous campaigns across London: one targeting symptom awareness in adults aged 45 and over, one targeting screening uptake in adults aged 50 and over. Both faced the same underlying barrier: embarrassment, stigma and the deeply ingrained habit of not speaking about what happens in the toilet.
Generic public health messaging had not shifted behaviour. Something more direct, more human and more precisely targeted was needed.
Our Approach
We put behaviour before demographics. Using YouGov Profiles, Behaviours and Attitudes data, we modelled audiences not by age band or postcode alone, but by the attitudinal and behavioural factors most predictive of symptom dismissal and screening non-participation. Six audience segments were identified, including shift workers, transport workers, desk-based professionals and communities facing health access inequality. Every channel decision, every site selection and every creative adaptation followed from that segmentation.
The campaign line, Don't Wipe Away the Signs, was developed from a simple behavioural insight: the earliest signs of bowel cancer are often noticed in the toilet, exactly where stigma is strongest. The line transformed a routine moment into a reason to pay attention. For the screening campaign, Don't Wipe Away the Hidden Signs reinforced that feeling fine is not the same as being clear.
The media framework was built to work as a connected system, not a collection of channels. OOH drove mass reach and awareness. Digital connected that outdoor exposure to paid social and digital. Search keywords were mapped to the terms most likely to follow commuter OOH exposure. Post-campaign, 84 to 92% of searches across both campaigns were on mobile, confirming that people saw the message on the Underground or a bus and searched immediately from their phones.
The campaign also broke new creative ground: the first-ever NHS 3D special-build billboards, one in West London and one in South East London, generated significant earned media coverage, extending reach well beyond the paid media budget.
Community organisations were not passive distributors. Fourteen partner organisations co-designed the community strategy, received clinical webinars, toolkits and translated materials, and shaped where and how messages were delivered in their communities. The Diwali ad-van activation in Brent, fronted by a local GP, was developed in direct response to community insight about the importance of trusted cultural figures.
The Results
15.09% year-on-year uplift in bowel cancer symptom searches is not a vanity metric. It shows the campaign moved people from passive awareness to active information-seeking, the critical precursor to GP consultation and early diagnosis.
The combinatorial media framework, OOH reach connecting to digital frequency and search intent capture, was planned through data science and validated post-campaign by the mobile search rate. The integrated strategy worked as designed.
The NHS-first 3D special-build format demonstrated that bold, physically unmissable outdoor executions generate disproportionate earned media, extending reach beyond the paid budget. The behavioural audience segmentation methodology and the device ID retargeting framework are both replicable blueprints for future NHS cancer campaigns.
This campaign demonstrated that the public sector can be a creative and strategic leader. And that doing so saves lives.