SBI Life’s initiative aims to normalize self-breast examination amongst Indian women 

'Thanks A Dot’ by SBI Life extends the breast cancer awareness initiative on multiple digital mediums tapped through regional language outreach.

October, being International Breast Cancer Awareness month, SBI Life launches ‘Thanks-a-Dot’ initiative to spread awareness about the need for self-breast examination to fight breast cancer. There is no doubt that breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women around the world. It has now become one of the most common cancers in India. As per industry reports, every 4 minutes one woman gets diagnosed with breast cancer in India. More importantly, about 50% of the women are already at stage three when they consult a doctor, and 15 – 20% at stage four leading to extremely low survival rates. 

Taking into consideration the above facts, SBI Life Insurance continues to build upon its ‘Thanks a Dot’ breast cancer awareness initiative. For the fourth year in a row, ‘Thanks A Dot’ continues to keep its focus intact towards empowering the women of India by raising awareness around breast cancer and promote the importance of self-breast examination for early lump detection. The company plans to run the initiative across multiple digital mediums to spur conversations around breast cancer and why bringing a behavioral change will aid in saving lives by adopting a life-saving skill. The initiative aims at persuading women to make self-breast checks a regular habit so that early detection of lumps can save lives.

With this, the company released a new digital video by roping in a renowned TV celebrity, Ms. Prachee Shah Pandya, who triggers curiosity amongst the viewers by saying ‘Know your Double O and learn a life-saving skill’, urging viewers to find out more by messaging ‘Hi’ on a WhatsApp number- 8860780000. 

The Whatsapp Chat Bot aims at engaging and educating women about the impact of the deadly disease. The objective is to push women to bring in the behavioral change by considering self-breast examination, an important step towards combating the disease. As this will help them understand how lumps could feel and take necessary action for timely detection. While there is a lot of informative content available on the Chat Bot, setting a reminder for one’s self-check, explain the right way to examine breast health etc., is now just a click away. An interactive web-app with touch sensitivity sensors in smart screens will also be launched in a phase-wise manner to train the fingers for accurate breast self-examination.

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Speaking about the campaign, Ravindra Sharma, Chief of Brand, Corporate Communication & CSR, SBI Life Insurance said “Women in India, most of the times, de-prioritize their health over other responsibilities. Breast Cancer being the most common cancer affecting women in India and the world, makes it crucial for everyone to be aware. There is a continuous need to spur conversations around the topic and push women to bring in a behavioral change by adopting self-breast examination at their convenience but at regular intervals. Keeping in mind the dire need to raise awareness, SBI Life’s breast cancer awareness initiative, ‘Thanks A Dot’ aims to not just make people aware of the deadly disease but also educate them about a life-saving skill that can help in early lump detection and save a life. With the launch of the interactive WhatsApp Chat Bot, information about the disease and setting reminders etc. will be easy and engaging the audience will help in letting the message reach maximum people across the country.” 

He further added, “Being a socially responsible organization, we believe that we have an important role to play in educating and empowering women by raising awareness about breast cancer and enabling them to conduct self-examinations regularly. Self-examination, thus becomes a very important step towards combating breast cancer. We hope that SBI Life's 'Thanks A Dot' initiative will make breast health an accepted topic in the Indian society by promoting discussions around it.”

To engage maximum audience, the campaign will utilize multi-channel platforms like PR, Digital, Social media, etc. to raise awareness around breast cancer. This apart the company also plans to organize rural breast cancer awareness camps across the country to spur conversations around its impact and importance of self-checks. 

Commenting on the campaign, Sahil Shah, Managing Partner, Dentsu Creative/WATConsult, said, “Breast cancer cases are rapidly growing in India because of the cultural taboo around women's health causes. We, as an agency, have always promoted behavior changing life-saving initiatives. This time along with SBI Life we found a way to take our multiyear Thanks a Dot breast cancer initiative to as many homes as possible in a digital execution. We are proud of kick-start a 6-month long activation where we teach self-examination techniques using digital as well as phygital means to a wide number of women. Most of whom will learn and discover the benefits of self-breast-examination for the first time". 

To start a dialogue about breast health and the importance of self-breast examinations among women in both urban and rural areas of India, the company launched the 'Thanks-A-Dot' initiative in the year 2019. As part of their campaign to spread awareness, SBI Life had also organized educational workshops in rural India in the past to break down sociocultural barriers associated with breast cancer.