Cancer awareness envy

I have to  admit to a degree of envy as a carcinoid/NETs advocate at this time of year. Breast Cancer Awareness Month begins tomorrow. For the next month, the United States will turn pink–right down to the laces on a football players shoes. There are special cans of soup, special kitchen appliances–special everything.

…we need to have an intelligent discussion…

There is no type of cancer that has been better marketed than breast cancer. Never mind the charges of companies pink washing their image and only turning over the smallest possible percentage of the income earned to breast cancer research. Those of us trying to raise awareness and funds for carcinoid/NETs would take those problems in an instant if we could have that kind of stage for even one day–let alone an entire month.

Breast cancer deserves its time

Don’t misunderstand me: breast cancer and breast cancer research very much matter to me. My younger sister is a long-term breast cancer survivor, I lost one of my best friends to it this winter, and I have many other friends and acquaintances who have been touched by it–including my sister-in-law, who is a five-year survivor. It is the third most common cancer in the US. It deserves a substantial budget and substantial attention.

I have to  admit to a degree of envy…

But for the next month, it will drown out every other cancer in the public consciousness. And for a month after that, the general public will remain burned out on cancer.

Caught in the backwash

There could be a worse time than November to schedule NET Cancer Awareness Day. There could be a worse month for Massachusetts to proclaim as NET Cancer Awareness Month. We could have picked a day in October–or tried to use the entire month. Even without Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, however, November is not an ideal time of year to schedule an awareness day for any disease–let alone one as historically challenged as carcinoid/NETs.

…the general public will remain burned out on cancer.

Even in early November, the weather has already begun to become dicey for outdoor activities in much of the country. People are thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the major charities have shifted their mail campaigns into high gear for end-of-year giving. And let’s not mention that November 10 is the day before Veterans’ Day–Armistice Day in the rest of the Western world–and that the focus in that timeframe is on the military and the end of World War I.

Wrong time of year

We are essentially shouting our message at people who have had an entire month of cancer stories thrown at them by the media–a media that, by the end of October, is ready to be done with cancer stories for a while because Thanksgiving is coming and Christmas is coming and we need uplifting stories about cures if we are going to do cancer at that time of year. And carcinoid/NETs doesn’t have those kinds of stories to tell.

People are thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In marketing, timing matters. November is the worst time in the year to be selling anything other than toys, turkeys, and honoring veterans.

Finding the right time

In the short-term, we have to live with November 10 as NET Cancer Awareness Day. But in the longer term, we need to have discussions about a better–more marketable–time to do this. We need a time when the weather is warmer and when there are fewer distractions. And when we won’t be dealing with the Breast Cancer Awareness Month hangover.

In marketing, timing matters.

May, June, and September strike me as ideal months. The weather is relatively pleasant and there are no major holidays in them with the kind of punch Thanksgiving and Christmas deliver. Of course, other cancers may already have a claim on those months. Certainly, May and June would put us in competition with many local Relays for Life. But even that would be better than dealing with the triple behemoths we face in November.

Please respond

As is the case with much of what I’ve written on the marketing issue in recent weeks, we need to have an intelligent discussion about this topic that goes beyond what I have written to this point. Once I’ve finished looking at the problems we face in marketing carcinoid/NETs to the broader public, I will make a number of concrete proposals about what I think we should do.

May, June, and September strike me as ideal months.

But between now and then, we need everyone who is dealing with this disease to take some time to think about these things and join the conversation about what we need to do–and how we can best accomplish what we all agree needs to be done.

(Editor’s Note: This is the sixth of a series of pieces that will approach the problem of carcinoid/NETs not as a medical problem but as a marketing problem. If we are going to increase funding for the disease, we have to think of it as something other than a medical issue. We need to make it a human issue for the general public. In the next part of this series, we’ll discuss the potential of a celebrity spokesperson.)