1 in 8 women will be affected by breast cancer at some point in their lives – in Germany alone over 70.000 new cases are reported per year – but it’s a highly curable disease if detected and treated early.

However, most women don’t self-check their breasts on a regular basis, causing many tumors to go unnoticed and untreated for weeks and months.

In 2018 Pink Ribbon Germany – the charity dedicated to breast cancer awareness – looked for a solution to inspire women to self-check their breast more often. Because, only if you know your own body and breasts you are able to spot changes that might be a threat to your health and well-being.

The task was clear: find a way to make self-checking an easy-to-perform routine that can be integrated into women’s daily lives.

Usually in Germany women see their gynecologist once a year – and that is also the only time they have their breasts checked. Also, important medical check-ups like mammograms are only paid by the public health insurance if the patient is over 50 years old. But breast cancer also affects young women.

Even though breast cancer is the most common cancer in western countries, most women don’t self-check their breasts for many reasons, some are afraid of it, some simply don’t know how to do it, others fear to do it wrong. All these reasons cause some tumors to go unnoticed and therefore untreated.

For Pink Ribbon Germany it was most important to find a way to integrate self-checking into the daily routine, take the “fear-factor” out of it and enable women all over Germany to perform the self-check themselves.

At least once a day women get naked anyway - to have shower. We used that fact to create:

CARE WHILE YOU CARE. The first ever Shower Gel and Body Lotion, made to remind and educate women to self-check their breasts during the shower and right after. Turning a daily beauty-routine into a life-saving routine.

To show women how to self-check, we created unique icons on the packs:

Steps 1-3 on the Shower Gel: Touch. Pat. Squeeze. Can be performed under the shower during the usual shower routine. They are followed by steps 4-6 on the Body Lotion: Compare. Move. Look. The last three steps should be performed after the shower while using the body lotion.

In addition to the icon-guide the back side of the packs held in-depth descriptions on how to perform the six steps. CARE WHILE YOU CARE was created using ecological, harm-free, vegan ingredients.

To bring self-checking into the daily-routine Pink Ribbon had to target women in a moment, where they are already in touch with their bodies to lower the hurdle of touching themselves and checking on their breasts.

Therefore, Pink Ribbon targeted women when they are naked already: under the shower and right after.

By developing a skincare brand CARE WHILE YOU CARE, consisting of a Shower Gel and Body Lotion, Pink Ribbon moved breast cancer awareness from the sterile doctor’s office into everyone’s bathroom.

With the unique design of the product self-checking became an easy to follow 6-steps task, that every woman could follow through. The approach behind the products was to create a highly aesthetics, harm-free product that speaks to women and inspires them to make self-checking a daily routine, as natural and easy as having a shower and using body lotion.

By creating CARE WHILE YOU CARE Pink Ribbon

The brand was created from scratch, starting with the name: CARE WHILE YOU CARE. Also the holistic design, including the unique icons and the whole packaging. Also, the ingredients were carefully chosen with the intention to create a harm-free product that is fun to use and that women love to have in their bath.

To launch the first edition of CARE WHILE YOU CARE, Pink Ribbon teamed up with a hotel chain, handing out a product set to every woman checking in, and cooperated with influential German and international celebrities to raise awareness and spread the message to their millions of followers.

A website was created to give women more information about self checking and giving the opportunity to donate for Pink Ribbon. By giving women smartly designed body care products Pink Ribbon changed their body-care-routine into a life-saving-routine.

CARE WHILE YOU CARE was launched as an exclusive limited edition in the first place. This first edition was handed out in cooperation with influential celebrities and a german hotel chain. Starting with these 2000 sets we reached millions of impressions and sparked a conversation among women worldwide.