Liga Contra el Cancer Normalises Male Cancer Screening in Peru
Liga Contra el Cancer's #AmoMisBolas campaign is a June 2018 Peruvian public-health initiative created by Wunderman Phantasia that used deliberately provocative language and an inverted Instagram heart sticker mechanic to normalise prostate, testicular, and penile cancer self-examination among young men aged fifteen to thirty.
The campaign launched in Peru as Liga Contra el Cancer's first national cancer-prevention effort directed specifically at men. Its dual behavioural objective, as documented by latinspots.com and expoknews.com, was to encourage monthly self-examination and annual preventive medical check-ups — two habits that had gone largely unpromoted in Peruvian public-health communications directed at male audiences. The name itself, translating loosely as "I Love My Balls," was a calculated act of linguistic irreverence designed to cut through the discomfort that ordinarily surrounds the subject.
Executed entirely through digital and social channels, primarily Instagram and Twitter, the campaign invited influencer participation and relied on a rotating, upside-down Instagram heart sticker that functioned as a symbolic representation of male anatomy. Participants shared the sticker alongside the hashtag, turning the act of posting into a public statement of self-care. According to Mercadonegro Pe and Ecomedia Pe, The Drum published positive coverage of the inverted sticker mechanic on 5 June 2018, noting its dual function as both visual joke and awareness symbol. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100. In a media landscape where competitors in the non-communicable disease awareness space — including the global Movember Foundation and local equivalents — had long relied on earnest, clinical messaging, #AmoMisBolas chose humour and normalisation as its primary strategic tools.
Álvaro Angulo, Creative Director at Wunderman Phantasia Perú, identified a foundational cultural silence as the campaign's strategic starting point. In an interview published by Expok News citing Codigo.pe on 15 June 2018, Angulo stated: "Nosotros mismo nos dimos cuenta, que hablar de este tipo de cáncer ya sea de próstata, pene o testículo, no eran temas de conversación en grupos de amigos, ni entre hombres, ni de padre a hijo, ni en colegios, ni nada." The observation — that prostate, testicular, and penile cancer were not discussed among friends, between men, from father to son, or in schools — defined the brief entirely.
In Peru, male cancer-screening behaviour has historically lagged behind awareness campaigns targeting women, a pattern consistent with broader Latin American public-health data cited by observatoriolegislativocele.com. The campaign's primary target audience of men aged fifteen to thirty represented a cohort that conventional public-service messaging had failed to reach, in part because clinical language and sombre visual registers had done little to make self-examination feel relevant or approachable to young male audiences. Against this backdrop, Wunderman Phantasia's decision to centre the campaign on language that is ordinarily censored in health communications was itself a strategic statement.
The competitive context reinforces the logic. The Movember Foundation and pan-regional organisations working on male health in Latin America had pursued awareness through fundraising mechanics and moustache-growing pledges — formats that require sustained participation over weeks. #AmoMisBolas compressed the ask into a single shareable gesture: post the sticker, use the hashtag, normalise the conversation. According to latinspots.com, the campaign's influencer layer, which included figures such as Damián Ode and Manuel Gold, amplified this gesture within the networks most likely to reach young Peruvian men organically.
Creative direction on #AmoMisBolas came from Álvaro Angulo at Wunderman Phantasia Perú, whose stated creative philosophy for the campaign centred on a single transferable message. As Angulo explained in the interview published by Expok News citing Codigo.pe, "El mensaje era ama tus bolas" — the message was love your balls. That reduction of a complex public-health ask to five vernacular words was the governing creative decision from which all executional elements followed.
The campaign's signature mechanic was an inverted Instagram heart sticker. Rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, the familiar heart icon takes on a visual resemblance to the male anatomy it was asking audiences to examine. According to mercadonegro.pe and ecomedia.pe, The Drum described this sticker as a symbolic representation of male anatomy when it covered the campaign in June 2018. The mechanic was elegant in its economy: it required no custom app, no paid media unit, and no production infrastructure beyond the sticker asset itself. Any Instagram user could participate immediately, and the act of sharing became a public declaration of engagement with the campaign's message.
The broader creative execution, as documented by latinspots.com and adlatina.com, incorporated demonstrations of male self-examination technique alongside the hashtag-driven influencer participation layer. This combination of instructional content and social amplification gave the campaign both practical utility and cultural reach. Production credits beyond the creative direction of Álvaro Angulo — including specific roles attributed to Jose Aburto, Augusto Landauro, and Carlos Bernal — are not fully detailed across the publicly available sources reviewed for this case study, though their association with the production is noted in campaign documentation. The campaign contained a single primary media asset, per clapboard.com, which concentrated creative impact rather than diffusing it across multiple formats.
The most consequential result attributed to #AmoMisBolas is human rather than algorithmic. According to Bruno Reggiardo, executive creative director at Wunderman Thompson Lima, as cited by latinspots.com, five people were diagnosed with cancer in time as a direct result of the campaign. In the context of a public-service campaign targeting a condition where early detection is the primary determinant of survival outcomes, this figure carries more weight than any engagement metric.
On the awards circuit, the campaign's effectiveness was recognised at two of the industry's most selective forums. According to latinspots.com and ecomedia.pe, #AmoMisBolas won Bronze in the PR Lions category at Cannes Lions 2019 and Bronze in the Social and Influencer category at the same festival. It also won Bronze in the Digital and Social category at El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2018, as reported by latinspots.com. These results placed the campaign among a small number of Peruvian public-health initiatives to receive international creative recognition in consecutive years.
No verified engagement statistics, reach figures, or platform-level performance data for #AmoMisBolas are publicly available beyond the sources reviewed here. Structurally, however, the campaign's single-asset, hashtag-driven format was well suited to organic amplification: the inverted sticker mechanic imposed no participation barrier, the influencer layer seeded content within networks already trusted by the target demographic, and the irreverent naming convention generated press coverage that extended reach well beyond paid distribution. The Clapboard Score for #AmoMisBolas is 66 out of 100, reflecting the campaign's creative clarity and its documented real-world health impact, weighed against the limited scope of a single-asset digital execution.
#AmoMisBolas is a June 2018 Peruvian public-health campaign by Liga Contra el Cancer and Wunderman Phantasia. It used irreverent language and an inverted Instagram heart sticker to encourage young men aged fifteen to thirty to perform monthly self-examination and seek annual check-ups for prostate, testicular, and penile cancer.
#AmoMisBolas won two Bronze Lions at Cannes Lions 2019. According to latinspots.com, the campaign took Bronze in the PR Lions category and Bronze in the Social and Influencer category. It had previously won Bronze in the Digital and Social category at El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2018, as reported by latinspots.com.
Five people were diagnosed with cancer in time as a result of the campaign. This figure was reported by Bruno Reggiardo, executive creative director at Wunderman Thompson Lima, and cited by latinspots.com. It remains the most significant documented outcome of the #AmoMisBolas public-health effort in Peru.
Álvaro Angulo served as Creative Director at Wunderman Phantasia Perú on #AmoMisBolas. He articulated the campaign's core brief in an interview published by Expok News citing Codigo.pe on 15 June 2018, identifying the cultural silence around male genital cancers as the central strategic and creative problem the campaign was built to solve.
The campaign used a standard Instagram heart sticker rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to create a visual resemblance to male anatomy. According to mercadonegro.pe and ecomedia.pe, The Drum noted its symbolic function in June 2018. Users shared the inverted sticker with the hashtag, turning a single gesture into a public act of cancer-awareness participation.
Liga Contra el Cancer targeted young Peruvian men primarily between the ages of fifteen and thirty. As documented by clapboard.com and Fullcontact Pe, this demographic had been largely unreached by prior male cancer-prevention messaging in Peru, making #AmoMisBolas the organisation's first national campaign directed specifically at men.
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