NHS
Don't Wipe Away the Signs
Bowel cancer caught early is survivable for around nine people in ten. Caught late, for around one in ten. The difference is a conversation nobody wants to have, in a room nobody talks about.
15.09%
Year-on-year uplift in bowel cancer symptom searches
84-92%
Of post-campaign searches made on mobile, exactly as the channel model predicted
First
3D special-build billboards the NHS has ever run, in West and South East London
The Challenge
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in England. Diagnosed early, survival is around 90%. Diagnosed at stage four, around 10%.
The gap between those two 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 driving symptom awareness among adults aged 45 and over, one driving screening uptake among adults aged 50 and over. Both ran into the same wall. Embarrassment, stigma, and the deeply ingrained habit of not discussing what happens in the toilet.
Generic public health messaging had already been tried and had not shifted behaviour. Something more direct, more human and far more precisely targeted was needed.
The first sign appears in the one place nobody talks about.
So we talked about it there.
We put behaviour before demographics. Using YouGov Profiles, Behaviours and Attitudes data we modelled audiences not by age band or postcode but by the attitudinal factors most predictive of symptom dismissal and screening non-participation. Six segments emerged, including shift workers, transport workers, desk-based professionals and communities facing health access inequality.
The line came from a simple behavioural truth: the earliest signs of bowel cancer are noticed in the toilet, exactly where stigma is strongest. Don't Wipe Away the Signs turned a routine moment into a reason to pay attention. For the screening campaign the line became Don't Wipe Away the Hidden Signs, built on the harder idea that feeling fine is not the same as being clear.
What We Did
Channels planned as one system, not as a list. Each had a role, and the roles handed off to each other.
Out of home provided the mass reach, placed against the segments rather than against generic footfall.
Digital and paid social extended exposure and carried the message into feeds where the same people were already spending their attention.
Search keywords were mapped to the terms likely to follow commuter out-of-home exposure, so the campaign was waiting when curiosity turned into a query. Post-campaign, between 84 and 92% of searches across both campaigns were made on mobile, which is the clearest possible validation that the handoff worked as designed.
Two 3D special-build billboards, one in West London and one in South East London, gave the campaign a physical presence people photographed and shared. They were the first the NHS has ever run, and they generated significant earned media on top of the paid plan.
Fourteen partner organisations co-designed the community strategy and received clinical webinars, toolkits and translated materials, so the message arrived through trusted local voices as well as bought media. A Diwali ad-van activation in Brent was fronted by a local GP, a decision that came straight from community insight about who people actually listen to.
The Results
The campaign moved search behaviour, and the way it moved it proved the model.
Search. Bowel cancer symptom searches rose 15.09% year on year across the campaign period. That is intent, not impressions.
Channel validation. Between 84 and 92% of post-campaign searches were made on mobile, which is exactly what the out-of-home to digital to search framework predicted. The plan was not just effective, it was effective for the reason we said it would be.
Earned media. The 3D special-builds were covered and shared well beyond the paid buy, giving an NHS cancer message the kind of reach public health budgets rarely buy.
Replicability. The segmentation methodology and the device ID retargeting framework are both reusable, which turns one campaign into a model for every NHS cancer campaign that follows it.