Marie Keating Foundation's Breathless Collection used weighted, constrictive garments to make lung cancer symptoms tangible, reaching close to 8 million in PR
ARCHIVEMarie Keating Foundation Turns Clothes Into a Lung Cancer Warning
The Breathless Collection is a 2025 public service campaign by the Marie Keating Foundation, created by Dublin agency The Brill Building, in which a capsule collection of wearable garments and accessories was designed to physically replicate the early symptoms of lung cancer, including breathlessness, fatigue, and persistent cough, to drive awareness during International Lung Cancer Awareness Month across Ireland and the United Kingdom.
The Marie Keating Foundation launched the initiative on November 6, 2025, in Dublin, timed to coincide with International Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November 2025, according to Mariekeating Ie. The campaign operated on a total all-in budget of €60,000, covering creative, production, and media, and generated close to 8 million in total PR reach during its launch month, as reported by mariekeating.ie. That ratio of reach to expenditure positions The Breathless Collection as one of the more efficient public interest campaigns to emerge from the island of Ireland in recent memory.
The collection itself comprised bespoke pieces including a gilet, scarf, tote bag, shoes, and a coffee keep-cup, each engineered through weighted fabrics and constrictive tailoring to convert invisible, frequently dismissed symptoms into an unmistakable physical experience, per mariekeating.ie. The strategic logic is direct: lung cancer still takes more lives in Ireland than any other cancer across both men and women, according to mariekeating.ie, and the five-year net survival rate in Ireland sits at just 24%, as cited by mariekeating.ie. Early diagnosis remains the decisive variable in survivorship outcomes, and the Foundation's longstanding focus on early detection gave the creative concept its moral urgency. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 77 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual cohesion and efficient use of limited resources against a high-stakes public health objective.
ARCHIVELung cancer carries the highest cancer mortality burden in Ireland. The Marie Keating Foundation exists specifically to close the gap between symptom onset and diagnosis through education, and The Breathless Collection represents the foundation's most overt attempt to make that educational mission visceral and culturally visible, according to mariekeating.ie. In the United Kingdom, lung cancer similarly ranks among the most commonly diagnosed cancers and accounts for a significant proportion of all cancer deaths, according to Cancer Research UK. Both markets share a documented problem: awareness of early lung cancer symptoms among the general population remains worryingly low, as the Foundation itself acknowledges, per mariekeating.ie.
The campaign entered a public health communications landscape where conventional symptom-awareness advertising — static OOH, broadcast spots, digital display — competes for diminishing attention. Organisations such as Cancer Research UK and the Irish Cancer Society operate substantial media budgets and maintain high public recognition in both markets, making differentiation through creative form essential for a charity operating at the scale of the Marie Keating Foundation. The Brill Building's answer was to abandon the poster and the screen entirely in favour of a physical object — a wearable artefact that placed symptoms on the body of the audience rather than in front of their eyes.
In Ireland, advances including immunotherapy and personalised treatments are improving lung cancer outcomes, yet those gains remain contingent on early-stage presentation, according to mariekeating.ie. The campaign's strategic premise is that symptom dismissal — not treatment inadequacy — is the primary obstacle to improved survivorship rates. By making breathlessness, restriction, and fatigue literally felt rather than merely described, The Breathless Collection addressed that dismissal behaviour at the level of embodied experience rather than rational persuasion. The Irish and UK public interest contexts both support this approach: health behaviour research consistently demonstrates that experiential interventions outperform information-only formats in producing intent to seek medical advice.
The Breathless Collection was creatively led by Peter Snodden and John McMahon at The Brill Building, as identified by Little Black Book and Adworld Ie. Fashion styling was handled by Cathy O'Connor, and photography was executed by Barry McCall, both credited collaborators on the campaign per mariekeating.ie and adworld.ie. The result is a body of work that sits at the intersection of fashion craft, medical communication, and experiential design — a register rarely occupied by public service advertising in Ireland or the United Kingdom.
Each garment and accessory in the collection was constructed to simulate a specific lung cancer symptom. Weighted fabrics replicated the fatigue and heaviness that accompany the disease in its early, pre-diagnosis stage. Constrictive tailoring recreated the chest tightness and breathlessness that patients frequently mistake for routine ageing or fitness decline, according to lbbonline.com. The coffee keep-cup, the tote bag, and the shoes extended the concept beyond clothing into the everyday objects people carry and wear without conscious attention — objects now recast as carriers of medical meaning.
A short documentary film, titled The Making of The Breathless Collection, anchored the campaign's content layer. The film took audiences behind the design process, bringing together lung cancer researchers, survivors, and creative collaborators to narrate the construction of each piece, per mariekeating.ie. This behind-the-scenes structure served a dual function: it authenticated the medical rationale underpinning each design decision and gave survivors a platform to speak directly about the symptoms they had initially dismissed. LBBonline described the campaign on January 14, 2026, as The Brill Building's move toward physical connection — a formulation that captures the deliberate shift away from screen-mediated awareness and toward tactile, embodied communication. Roisin Keown, The Brill Building's CCO and CEO, was recognised in a Campaign Brief review of the work as part of a Bestads Best of the Week feature, as reported by Campaign Brief on October 21, 2026.
The Breathless Collection received a Gerety Awards Bronze in 2026, awarded to The Brill Building for the Marie Keating Foundation in the Product and Packaging Design category, specifically within the Work For Good designation, according to mariekeating.ie. The Gerety Awards are judged entirely by senior women in the global advertising industry, and recognition in the Work For Good category places the campaign within a cohort of work evaluated explicitly on the coherence between creative form and social purpose.
On a total production and media budget of €60,000, the campaign generated close to 8 million in total PR reach during its launch month, as reported by mariekeating.ie. That figure encompasses earned media across Ireland and the United Kingdom and reflects the degree to which the fashion-meets-public-health concept translated into editorial and cultural coverage beyond the Foundation's owned channels. For a campaign of this budget scale in the Irish and UK public interest sector, that level of organic amplification is structurally significant.
The campaign page was published on October 29, 2025, per mariekeating.ie, with the public launch following on November 6, 2025, in Dublin. Industry recognition arrived quickly: LBBonline published a feature on the work on January 14, 2026, as reported by lbbonline.com, and the campaign was subsequently reviewed by Campaign Brief. The Brill Building's creative lead noted, as cited by adworld.ie, that the initiative demonstrated original innovation from Ireland recognised at a global level, alongside measurable real-world impact for the charity. The Breathless Collection's structural effectiveness rests on a single disciplined insight — that an unfamiliar physical experience is harder to dismiss than a familiar verbal warning — and the campaign's reach-to-budget ratio suggests that insight translated into genuine audience engagement across both the Irish and United Kingdom markets.
The Breathless Collection is a 2025 public service campaign by the Marie Keating Foundation. Created by Dublin agency The Brill Building, it comprises a capsule collection of garments and accessories designed with weighted fabrics and constrictive tailoring to physically replicate early lung cancer symptoms, launching in Ireland and the United Kingdom during International Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November 2025.
The Brill Building created the campaign. Creative direction was led by Peter Snodden and John McMahon at the agency. Cathy O'Connor collaborated on fashion styling and Barry McCall on photography, as identified by mariekeating.ie and adworld.ie. The Brill Building has worked with the Marie Keating Foundation on lung cancer awareness campaigns since at least 2022.
The Breathless Collection won a Gerety Awards Bronze in 2026. The award was given to The Brill Building for the Marie Keating Foundation in the Product and Packaging Design category under the Work For Good designation, according to mariekeating.ie. The Gerety Awards are judged exclusively by senior women leaders across the global advertising industry.
The campaign operated on a total all-in budget of €60,000 covering creative, production, and media, according to mariekeating.ie. It generated close to 8 million in total PR reach during its launch month. That reach-to-budget ratio reflects the strength of the concept's editorial appeal across Ireland and the United Kingdom during Lung Cancer Awareness Month 2025.
Lung cancer takes more lives in Ireland than any other cancer, according to mariekeating.ie. The five-year net survival rate in Ireland is just 24%, as cited by mariekeating.ie, making early diagnosis the most consequential factor in survivorship. The Foundation's focus on symptoms awareness directly addresses the documented tendency of patients to dismiss early warning signs before seeking medical advice.
The collection included a gilet, scarf, tote bag, shoes, and a coffee keep-cup, per mariekeating.ie. Each piece was constructed using weighted fabrics and constrictive tailoring to simulate the physical experience of lung cancer symptoms including breathlessness, fatigue, and chest restriction. The items were designed to make invisible pre-diagnosis symptoms tangible for a general audience in Ireland and the UK.
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