Barcaffè: a truly touching #pinkoctober message

Barcaffè is a traditional supporter of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This time, we wanted to push the leading coffee brand in Slovenia beyond the usual boundaries on social media. Simply conveying the message through the pink packaging wouldn’t be enough, nor would a conventional advertisement.

Therefore, we approached communicating the importance of self-examination in a fresh way. We depicted the “Art of Self-Examination” through the process of handcrafting unique porcelain coffee cups. These cups symbolize the fragility of health, and the pink color represents the color of October.

For Instagram, we designed a series of three Reels. This assembles a message about the importance of thorough self-examination, statistics on the illness, and the symbolic shadow of doubt from which the viewer should emerge.

In the first video, the artist carefully kneaded sculpting clay with her hands, delicately shaping cups – a process we intentionally “choreographed” to illustrate the breast self-examination procedure.

In the next video, we emphasized that handmade porcelain cups are not perfect, but they are beautiful, unique, and worth caring for precisely because of their imperfections. The symbolic diversity of breasts was slightly spiced up with the meaningful imprint of a coffee bean at the bottom of the cup.

The final Reel depicted the tracking of shadows cast by the coffee cups. This part of the series directly raised awareness of how and why to perform self-examinations. The text encouraged viewers to follow the movements of shadows (depicted with the artist’s hands) and understand the motions that should be included in each monthly self-examination. We included breast cancer statistics as an additional reminder that the disease does not discriminate, but its consequences can be reduced through timely detection.

The unique combination of an artistic approach, subtle symbolism, and empathetic breast health awareness has captured the attention (and likes) of followers. The campaign has successfully heightened awareness of the importance of self-examination and encouraged followers to incorporate these simple steps into their daily routines. Ultimately, a few minutes of self-care doesn’t end with enjoying a cup of coffee.