Our campaign's simple experiment: Can humor inform men about the prostate's function and importance in good health? 
and our latest...
will trying to make the prostate funny get more guys to care about their gland health?
Monday
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NOW ONLINE AT THIS LINK: The Piņata Mind,
the book that inspired the MansGland Campaign.>
Our campaign is gaining momentum. In January both Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times featured photos and elements of the story about our experiment in men's health communications.
Also, my book about my journey to good health is now online here at this link.The Crisis in Men's Health and Men's Health Communications: An Apathetic Media Audience Caring & Doing Too Little For Its Own Health.
There is a crisis in men's health. Too many men are uninterested in reading about, talking about or listening to advice about their health. With prostate health, many men under 50 do not even know the basic function of the prostate. How can we alert them to its importance for a healthy body and mind, and get them ready to manage their prostate health according to American Urological Association guidelines? After all, prostate cancer needlessly kills more than 30,000 American men a year.
Perhaps humor is one idea? Maybe men will glance at pictures that elicit a grin, and leave a message that sticks? Perhaps they will call our 1-800-PSA-TEST phone line and listen to our funny one-minute bits?
Is an attempt to make the prostate funny an effective tactic? Our experiment is beginning to discover the answer to this question. We invite you to use our material as the starting point for conversation with other men. Men's health groups countrywide now are using our posters for this purpose.
We welcome your comments via email. Thank you, Kim Garretson, founder. Profile.
Click here or on the dog picture at right to visit our newest site about a unique bond between men and dogs.
Wednesday
Getting doofus husbands to go to the doctor and just get the basic health screenings...
I've had several conversations in the last month with women who have brilliant husbands. But, they won't go to the doctor, and they won't tell their spouses why. I know why. They are trapped in fear behind a facade of strength. Perhaps jabbing at that silly veil with silly pictures could help?
Sunday
Experimenting with more than funny pictures: Our 1-800-PSA-TEST comedy call-in service will feature one-minute funny bits about getting tested.
Is the notion of cancer so off-putting that men either avoid the PSA Test, or worse, don't take the time to read about the test's importance? And with the recent controversy over the efficacy of the test, do some men shrug and say: "if it's no good, it's no good for me." These are dangerous attitudes and behaviors.
For our experiments in using humor to convey simple messages about the function of the prostate and the easy way to screen its health (notice we are not about cancer) we are adding spoken word comedy to the mix.
Men's health book author Gregg Stebben, who has interviewed most of the famous men with prostate cancer, including Millken, Guliani and Swartzkopf, will host the first of these one-minute funny bits. Gregg said that in most interviews these worldly-wise men admitted that they never read or thought about prostate health, and that their wives were responsible for getting them to get the PSA-Test. Our goal is reach women who can at least get their husbands and fathers to call this number.
Again, with the PSA test under some scrutiny, if you know men who are bypassing it, we have four words: GET TESTED. KNOW SOMETHING..
Creating Funny Pictures About Prostate Health? Remixing Vintage Album & Pulp Magazine Covers As One Tactic.
Old Albums Updated. Galleries of terribly funny album covers from terrible albums of old have begun to appear on the Web. We're having fun altering some to focus on prostate health issues, such as the difficulty some women have in getting their husbands to get the proper tests.
Speaking of Wives & Husbands. We came across a site featuring funny TV commercials, and in this one a couple strolls down the street apparently in love. Then with no warning, she kicks him in the face with an amazing ballet kick. Several times. We can imagine him telling her he skipped his PSA blood test.
If There Had Been Prostate Pop Songs. Among the hilarious album covers are many from really, really bad recording artists. We asked: "What if these groups had sung about the prostate and the proper screenings when those of us in our 50s were in our 30s? Would we have paid attention? We can't imagine why this first group posed this way, so we renamed it The Embarrassments.
Man in a Can. Do you know any men who don't even know what contribution the prostate makes to a healthy sex life?
Daring. Can the high-fat Atkins diet pummel your prosate?
Saturday
Left: If DEVO had selected a different name? One hit wonder DEVO is best known for its hit Whip It. What if the band had been called something else, and the hit had been Prick It, referring to the drawing of blood?.
Center: If Political Correctness Had Not Been Invented. Imagine if this surely-awful band had been singing about being put in staitjackets and forced to undergo prostate tests because they were cowards?.
Right: Fulfilling Women's Dreams? With one of the strangest album covers we've ever seen, we imagined what these women might be dreaming about. Now, why they are stretched out like corpses in the snow with their heads elevated by what looks like fireplace utensils, we haven't a clue. Comment?
Wednesday
We're Participating in Penn State's Crisis in Men's Health Conference.
Now that the 2004 Men's Health conference is over, the second year of this important national conference promises to again increase awareness and action among the health care industry and university research institutions. Our illustrated white paper for the 2004 conference surmised that traditional sources of info are being replaced by something we call 'personal content'. At the same time, skepticism about marketing is on the rise, so we can't expect the healthcare industry to get much better at reaching men. We think one answer is to provide ideas -- like funny pictures -- to those who will be sharing personal digital content with men who need to get clued-in about gland health.
Will Media Content About Men's Health Continue to Fade in Importance as the Audience Has More Tools for Creating & Sharing Information?
The Next Generation of Personal Content Will Unlock Creative Ways to Reach Men. If sending, printing and sharing funny personalized pictures and video might be an effective way to instruct men on the basics of the prostate and its health risks, then we are about to see amazing new tools to do just that. Personalized e-greeting cards are already here of course. And just emerging are photo manipulation tools that are fast and easy. For instance, the incredible Letter James site from Germany allows you to create custom pictures like those above in a flash.
Sunday
Our Campaign's National Media Coverage Expands, Winter '05.
What follows are our two globally-distributed newspaper feature articles.This HealthDay syndicated article appeared more than 100 top newspapers.
Here, the LA Times runs our Chicago Tribune syndicated story.
In January, 2005, both Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times covered elements of our story, and several Internet health sites ran news items. We've even been named Minnesota's Blog of the Day!
With the launch of our 1-800-PSA-Test comedy service, we will be joining forces with healthcare marketing campaigns to publicize this service to women, with the suggestion that they get husbands and other men to dial it.
Most importantly, every week we are hearing from groups asking to use our funny pictures. Examples include Oklahoma's largest health information service, and an awareness campaign in Montreal. A nursing school is overcoming discomfort for first-year students when introducing men's health topics with our posters.
If you would like to use our material, please email us.
Saturday
Why Don't All Docs Test All Men? Our campaign aims to be blunt about some of our positions. We believe that if a doctor is not following the American Urological Association recommendations about the PSA test, then he or she might be just going through the motions like a puppet. There is controversy in the healthcare industry about the PSA test (search Newsweek.com for "Prostate Cancer's Difficult Choices" to learn more). Our view for you and other men? The controversy should have nothing to do with what you must do for your own best health: Get tested!
Gotta Go Too Often? If your sleep is interrupted by trips to the bathroom or you run to the john more often than other guys your age, you could have Benign Prostate Hyperplasia or BHP. Check out the oddly named, but really nifty, TUNA Therapy by clicking here.
Cowards? Our campaign's research has found that some men avoid prostate check-ups because of the doctor's Digital Rectal Exam (DRE). But it's only step one in the process, yet necessary. And avoiding the procedure - which lasts only a few seconds and is a breeze - is cowardly.Yikes! Devices! This original old magazine cover had the woman shooting the fellow with a gun. We put new devices in her hand and the other chap's. Why? Our research found that men squirm at the thought of modern medicine's devices probing them for clues to prostate health. With our technique of overblowing reality, our message is that there is little discomfort in these important procedures.
Sunday
We started our campaign to use PG-13 humor to make the prostate funny so as not to offend anyone. However, marketing executives from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries have asked us to explore the use of 'edgier' humor for reaching younger men. And, while we avoid the topic of prostate cancer, leaving that to the cancer awareness non-profits, some staff members of those groups have wondered if helping cancer patients smile and laugh as a coping tactic might be beneficial. With the caution that we may make some viewers uncomfortable, keep scrollng down if you wish to visit this area of our site.(By the way, did you know the prostate is the only heart-shaped organ in human anatomy.)
In doing research for our campaign, we've been shocked to learn that many men do not know the prostate's function. Richard Saul Wurman's epochal book Information Anxiety says that if someone does not understand the basics of a topic, he can't learn anything new about it. So that's why we're not about cancer. We're about the prostate. Look for more retro magazine and movie posters about positive prostate-health steps to take coming soon. If you have prostate cancer, our goal is make you grin with reminders about healthy attitudes and actions to help fight the disease.
While our campaign tries to avoid the topic of prostate cancer, preferring to leave that topic to the highly-regarded cancer awareness groups, some cancer survivors have asked us if we think funny' glanceable' pictures might be helpful in lightening the burden of living with the disease. Again, we don't know the answer to this question, but experimenting with visual journalism is one way to get professionals and cancer patients to discuss the question. Of course, a common technique is the use of famous cancer survivors to urge men to do more. So here is our twist on this tactic. Also, if you'd like to see a journal of funny pictures put together by a cancer survivor click the following link.
Download Journal in a new browser.
Watch for some of the graphic arts industry's best artists to use photo manipulation software in creating funny pictures for our campaign's various galleries. With this image, we can imagine the 'puppy dog' looks that men give their wives when they don't follow through on the proper medical tests.
Comment?
So you're in a noisy restaurant and you see a couple of guys start to do strange gyrations with their trouser legs back and forth as if they're communicating. They may actually be spelling out words in a new language -- Trouser Talk. And when they are talking about having to go too often, they may have BPH -- and thus low flow -- and not know it. (Of course, the gyrations could also mean they just 'gotta go right now'.
Why does this site have so many gags about guys always running to the bathroom? Because that's a key signal for a friend, wife or girlfriend to pick up and make certain this chap gets a DRE and PSA test. Names of the cleaning crew on the left of this comic poster are: Slow Mop Sue, Sam Scrub-A-Dub, and TP Refilling Freak.
Of course, the reason public johns are closed for cleaning is because of the filthy vermin slobs who mess them up for the rest of us. Click Larger view to meet this cockroach and his rat companion.
The Web is wonderful for finding odd images like our awful old album covers above. Here we haven't a clue what this image means, but since many women probably feel like they are talking to a brick wall when encouraging their husbands to take the proper steps in prostate health, maybe this image speaks to that problem.
Testosterone is the enemy of prostate cancer cells, yet many men who may not be diligently getting checked for cancer may be taking testosterone boosting supplements or prescriptions. This is a potential crisis we have yet to see the media cover.
You can admit it. You really don't know where the prostate is (other than it must be close to the entry point the doc uses for digital rectal exams). You don't know how big it is. And so on. Again, it's simple. It's the size of walnut and it sits just below your bladder. The urethra, the tube that carries urine, runs through the middle of the gland.
Saturday
If you know men who feel trapped by trying to maintain a facade of their invincibility but don't do the right things for their health, we say: "We could give a Rat's Ass. Get smart." The Men's Health Network is a fantastic organization. Consider the following from its Goals statement: "There is an ongoing, increasing and predominantly silent crisis in the health and well-being of men. Due to a lack of awareness, poor health education, and culturally induced behavior patterns in their work and personal lives, men's health and well-being are deteriorating steadily." Watch for more about MHN at this site.
Again, we've been shocked to meet men who take pride in supposedly tricking their wives so they don't have to keep doctors' appointments. The excuse is usually that something came up at the last moment. We can't even comment on the cowardice and idiocy in this behavior.
Some critics of our campaign have suggested not trying to get clever or artistic with our posters. Instead, they suggest simple, direct prodding at the fear men might harbor about proper prostate health. We welcome the debate, but we don't think fear works in the long haul.
