It’s November, therefore it’s very cold and there are thousands of Mo-Bro’s on the streets of the UK. Commuting on the tube or bus, you can spot moustaches perched on the top lip of many a young gentleman. A knowledgeable nod from one Mo-Bro to another, this simple sign is more than acknowledgement is it camaraderie.
What is it? Movember is a charity committed to funding research into the causes and cures of testicular cancer.
What’s makes it so different? There are many male orientated charities (albeit not as many as female ones), so what makes Movember any different? I believe there are 2 main differentiators,
- It is focused into one month of the year.
- It is very easy to publicly show you are a Mo-Bro.
Looking at each of these points we can dissect them to determine their impact. Firstly, the consumer side of Movember is focussed into one month, November, this underpins everything within the brand starting with the name: Movember. If you asked 100 brand owners if they would like 100% market coverage of their brand spread evenly throughout the year, you would get 100 answers saying ‘yes!’. This is one of the major reasons behind my ‘Mo’ love, because they have gone out of their way to singularly focus and narrow their consumer touch points and fund raising into one month of the year – that’s less than 10% of the year! A completely different strategy to the vast majority of other charities and in complete contrast their competitors (yes even charities have competitors). It could be argued that because the Movember brand is withdrawn from the consumer for 11 months of the year, they have been starved and then when given the chance to show some ‘Mo’ love people fall over themselves to be involved. It’s a clever, but more importantly a very brave, brand owner who adopts this strategy – hence my Mo love!
The second benefit is that every male can publicly demonstrate that they’re a Mo-Bro, actually some chaps struggle to grow a moustache, myself included as mine is a sparse mixture of thick blond hairs and some rather whispy bum-fluff – not a great look! Yet I walk down the street proudly showing off my lack lustre Mo. Large numbers of charities and other organisations realise the strength and value of letting their supporters publicly show their support (great examples of this are the Yellow wristband for LIVEstrong and the Poppy from The British Legion) yet the Mo for Movember is the only one that you have to grow and cultivate and it’s on your face, nobody can miss the fact you are a Mo-Bro. The beauty of the Moustache is that it harks back to older times before we had the modern instant gratification syndrome in which we all now live – because you have to wait a couple of weeks before showing off your Mo and you have to love, stroke and trim it whereas you give LIVEstrong a couple of quid and you are given a wrist band straight away.
So to summarise, I think the Movember brand and its values are a perfect storm of a great cause, creativity, unique strategy and nostalgia – and I will continue to support Movember every November.
Paul Mellor