Yahoo! Kicks Off Annual Campaign to Empower its Community of Users to Join the Fight Against Breast Cancer
October 4, 2010 – (BUSINESS WIRE) – This October marks the 25th anniversary of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Yahoo! is teaming up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) to help uninsured women receive free mammograms in the United States and is encouraging breast cancer awareness globally in 17 countries. Yahoo! is inspiring its hundreds of millions of users to visit the Yahoo! Shine Breast Cancer Awareness site and Yahoo! Pulse to answer the question, “Why are you turning pink?” For every person who shares their reason for “turning pink,” Yahoo! will donate $1 (up to $50,000) to NBCF.
Discover why the world is “turning pink” in October: An update could be “my sister is a survivor” or “I start chemo on Monday.” Every time someone enters their reason for “turning pink,” the Yahoo! Shine Breast Cancer Awareness site will show a scrolling list of status updates with similar key words. This personal word scroll will enable people to connect with like-minded people and hopefully spark conversations about people’s opinions, concerns and dreams for ending breast cancer. This will also allow people to track the trends and themes reflecting what people around the world are thinking.
Additionally, Yahoo! is helping to increase awareness across its network of sites and services including an altered logo on Yahoo.com, a celebrity gallery of breast cancer survivors on OMG, a promo encouraging people to dress their Avatars in pink ribbon gear, and a presence on Social Pulse in Yahoo! Mobile.
Thinking and searching pink: The Yahoo! Search team has their finger on the pulse of consumer opinions and sentiments around breast cancer-related issues. Consumer searches over the last year unveiled some unexpected trends: Mammograms: In 2008, “mammogram” searches on Yahoo! spiked 250% in October. In 2009, those searches spiked 344% in November, the month following National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Male Support: Women don’t have to carry the burden of understanding this disease alone. In 2009, men conducted 3 out of 10 searches on Yahoo! for “breast cancer” — a 25% increase over 2008. On Yahoo!, searches for breast cancer awareness double in October compared to other months of the year and the number of breast cancer searches in 2009 were 15% higher than 2007.
Unique breast cancer terms on Yahoo! Search (years): 2010: “breast cancer bracelets,” “breast cancer tattoos,” “breast cancer jewelry,” “Maura Tierney breast cancer,” 2009: “metastatic breast cancer,” “male breast cancer,” “breast cancer quotes,” “NFL breast cancer awareness drive” (hats, apparel, etc.) 2008: “Christina Applegate” (the actress announced she had breast cancer in late summer ’08), “breast cancer poems” Breast Cancer related questions that we see searched on Yahoo!: What are the early signs of breast cancer? What is breast cancer? What are the symptoms of breast cancer? Is there a breast cancer vaccine? What are the types of breast cancer? When is breast cancer awareness month? What are the survival rates for breast cancer?
How good grows on Yahoo! Yahoo!’s social responsibility department, Yahoo! for Good, is focused on empowering people to make a positive impact by leveraging Yahoo!’s audience, products, and employees. The company enables good deeds to grow by giving its 600 million users a broad platform to rally around causes, including mobilizing when disaster or hardship strikes. Yahoo! for Good supports a large number of nonprofit efforts that span across raising awareness, offering much-needed funding, providing disaster relief, and more. Yahoo!’s social responsibility efforts are closely aligned to Yahoo!’s business. Ongoing efforts can be found at forgood.yahoo.com.
CONTACT:
Terrell Karlsten
Yahoo! Inc.
408-349-5528
[email protected]