Survival from ovarian cancer is much worse than for many other cancers due to late diagnosis and a lack of effective treatment options.

This is unsurprising when only 20% of women are able to name bloating as one of the symptoms.

But survival can be up to 90% if it is diagnosed early. Understanding the symptoms of ovarian cancer is crucial to early diagnosis, so we worked with Target Ovarian Cancer to develop a short animation highlighting the symptoms and common mistakes (such as a smear test not detecting ovarian cancer).

The concept

Target Ovarian Cancer already had campaign materials and a strong brand, so we wanted the animation to capture this in a creative way.

We used paper cut-outs and stop motion to create an almost-motion graphics effect, which worked extremely well with the brand and existing materials. The stop motion is seamless but maintains the paper aesthetic, bringing a personal and thoughtful element to the video.

Social media

The animation was created predominantly for use on social media, where sounds are often not turned on, so we decided that a voiceover would not be needed in this case.

Instead, we highlighted each of the four symptoms in bold text with the corresponding scene to clearly show what the symptom was, with a clear message at the end directing women to visit their GP if they recognised any of the symptoms in the film.

Music was added for anyone watching the video with the sound on.

In just over 30 seconds, we highlighted the four key symptoms, some common misconceptions, and a call to action in a clear, engaging and sensitive way.

The video has been viewed in excess of 250k times on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and is still used and shared widely today. The campaign as a whole has helped to raise awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer, to support GPs in diagnosing earlier, and to support women already diagnosed.

Visit the Target Ovarian Cancer website for more information.