Fuck Cancer and Cologuard Use Dogs to Reframe Colorectal Screening
Cologuard's 'Pick Up Your Poop' is a 2025 healthcare film campaign created by The Community for Exact Sciences' Cologuard stool-DNA screening test and nonprofit partner Fuck Cancer, launching in the United States during Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March 2025 to reframe at-home stool sample collection as no more daunting than picking up after a dog.
The campaign arrives at a moment when colorectal cancer screening compliance in the United States remains a persistent public health challenge. Cologuard, Exact Sciences' flagship at-home screening product, has built its positioning around making the screening process less intimidating for American patients who might otherwise defer or decline a colonoscopy. 'Pick Up Your Poop' represents a deliberate creative escalation of that positioning — one that leans into profanity, humor, and anthropomorphized animals to dissolve the squeamishness that keeps people from completing a stool-based test.
The campaign's central mechanic is a talking dog — a self-described expert in picking up poop — who addresses camera directly, urging humans to apply the same willingness they demonstrate when cleaning up after their pets to handling their own stool sample for Cologuard. As reported by Fierce Pharma, the spot was described as a deliberately profane, humorous PSA featuring a potty-mouthed dog, published in its coverage dated March 19, 2025. The campaign extended beyond a single film asset through a personalized video feature, allowing users in the United States to upload a photograph of their own dog to generate a custom version of the campaign video, creating a shareable, socially native layer on top of the broadcast-style film. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100.
Cologuard's strategic premise rests on a single, observable behavioral contradiction. Americans who own dogs handle their pets' feces daily without hesitation, yet a meaningful share of the population reports reluctance or discomfort when asked to collect their own stool sample as part of a colorectal cancer screening protocol, according to campaign documentation published on marcelomaciel.me. The Community identified this gap and built the entire creative platform around closing it through humor and direct comparison rather than clinical reassurance.
The broader market context gives this strategy urgency. The global colorectal cancer screening market is estimated at approximately $18.62 billion in 2025, according to Fortune Business Insights, with stool-DNA assays — the segment Cologuard occupies — forecast to grow at an 11.05 percent compound annual growth rate through 2031, according to Grand View Research, significantly outpacing the broader screening category. In the United States, colonoscopy holds an estimated market share of between 38 and 46 percent of relevant screening procedures, according to Mordor Intelligence, making it the dominant incumbent against which non-invasive alternatives must position. Competitors including Guardant Health's Shield blood-based test and Exact Sciences' own colonoscopy referral pathway compete for the same pool of patients who are seeking a less procedurally intensive alternative to traditional colonoscopy.
Fuck Cancer, the nonprofit co-branding partner on this campaign, brings an early-detection and prevention mandate that aligns with Cologuard's commercial interest in expanding the screened population across the United States. The partnership allows the campaign to operate simultaneously as a public health message and a product prompt, giving the film credibility that a purely commercial spot might not achieve. Launching during Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March 2025 amplifies both dimensions, placing the work inside an existing cultural and clinical conversation rather than attempting to manufacture one from scratch.
The Community led the creative development of 'Pick Up Your Poop' with a senior team whose credits are documented across the agency's portfolio and trade coverage. Joaquin Molla, co-founder and global chief creative officer of The Community, oversaw the campaign alongside Peter Alsante, chief creative officer for the agency's New York operation. Fernando Reis served as executive creative director, with Cora Fernandez directing the art creative direction and Federico Diaz leading copy. Associate creative directors Marcelo Maciel on art and Martin Subercaseaux Sousa on copy completed the core creative unit, according to documentation published on marcelomaciel.me.
The film's production centers on a single, direct-address performance by a dog — or rather, a dog given a human voice and a pointed argument. The creative approach eschews the softened, pastel-toned visual language common in healthcare advertising in the United States, opting instead for the register of a confident, slightly exasperated friend who cannot understand why you will bag your Labrador's waste on a morning walk but balk at a Cologuard kit. As reported by Fierce Pharma, the dog's dialogue is deliberately profane, a calculated choice to signal that this campaign is not attempting to be polite about a topic that politeness has historically failed to mobilize people around.
The personalized video extension — allowing users to upload their own dog's photograph to receive a custom version of the film — introduces a production infrastructure that goes beyond a standard broadcast deliverable, as documented by gracepoukey.com. This mechanic transforms the film from a one-to-many broadcast into a one-to-one conversation, increasing the probability of organic social sharing among US audiences who see their own pet appear in a colorectal cancer awareness video. The campaign was published as a single film asset, with the personalized layer functioning as a distribution amplifier built on top of that core creative unit.
No verified campaign-specific business results for 'Pick Up Your Poop' are publicly available at the time of writing, including sales lift, Cologuard test orders, brand tracking movement, or colorectal screening inquiry volumes attributable to the campaign. Effie, One Show, D&AD, Clio, Webby, and WARC award databases do not show verified entries or results for this campaign in available sources.
The campaign did earn a Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2025, according to records cited on clapboard.com. The specific Cannes Lions category in which the award was won is not identified in available sources. That recognition places the work among a select body of healthcare advertising acknowledged by the industry's most internationally visible jury process, and it confirms that the campaign's creative ambition registered with professional evaluators beyond the US market in which it ran.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several characteristics associated with effective public health creative. The behavioral insight is specific and observable rather than abstract, which gives the film's argument an internal logic that survives the absence of clinical language. The personalized video feature, as documented on marcelomaciel.me and reported by Medical Marketing and Media on June 30, 2025, creates a sharing mechanism that healthcare campaigns rarely deploy. Commentary from three healthcare marketing executives published by Medical Marketing and Media acknowledged the campaign's deliberate provocation as a considered strategic choice rather than mere novelty. Against the standards of healthcare film advertising in the United States, 'Pick Up Your Poop' represents a structurally sound attempt to convert discomfort into action through humor — a method the Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects as competent creative execution with room to prove its full impact through verified audience and business outcomes.
'Pick Up Your Poop' is a 2025 healthcare film campaign created by The Community for Cologuard and Fuck Cancer, launched in the United States during Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March 2025. It features a talking dog urging people to collect a stool sample for colorectal cancer screening by comparing it to picking up after a pet.
The Community advertising agency created the campaign. Key credits include Joaquin Molla as global chief creative officer, Peter Alsante as chief creative officer New York, and Fernando Reis as executive creative director, with art and copy creative directors Cora Fernandez and Federico Diaz, as documented on marcelomaciel.me. Film production credits are not publicly documented.
The campaign won a Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2025, according to clapboard.com. The specific Cannes Lions category is not identified in available sources. No verified entries or wins from Effie, One Show, D&AD, Clio, or Webby award databases are publicly available for this campaign.
The campaign targets a behavioral contradiction: people handle their pets' feces readily but feel uncomfortable collecting their own stool sample for colorectal cancer screening. The Community built the film around a potty-mouthed talking dog to close that gap using humor, as described in reporting by Fierce Pharma in March 2025.
The campaign offered a personalized video feature allowing US users to upload a photograph of their own dog to receive a custom version of the campaign film. This mechanic, documented on marcelomaciel.me and gracepoukey.com, extended the single film asset into a shareable, socially native format designed to increase organic distribution across American audiences.
The Cologuard 'Pick Up Your Poop' campaign by The Community receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects competent creative execution grounded in a specific behavioral insight, with the campaign's full impact limited by the absence of publicly verified audience response or business performance data from the United States market.
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