Breast cancer ad campaign backlash

Breast cancer survivors have called out the Breast Cancer Foundation over its latest ad campaign, prompting the organisation to change it.

The ads, airing on TV and radio for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, state ‘‘breast cancer is contagious. It touches the whole family’’. The campaign hit the wrong note for a number of women living with cancer, and has prompted a number of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Tamzyn Adding, 39, spent Monday night reassuring her four young daughters they wouldn’t catch her cancer. The Auckland family were in the lounge watching TV on Monday night when the ad came on.

She said her 8-year-old turned to her and said, ‘‘you said I couldn’t catch it’’.

When Adding was diagnosed two years ago she talked a lot with her children – then 4, 6 and two aged 10 – about what cancer was, how she got it and whether they could catch it ‘‘like a cold’’. She underwent a full mastectomy of the left breast, and has to take daily medication for another eight years to lessen the chance of recurrence.

Her daughters had been reassured up until the point of hearing the ad, which ‘‘completely reversed all that’’ and ‘‘stressed them out,’’ the furniture designer said. Breast Cancer Foundation chief executive Evangelia Henderson said they had taken heed of the feedback and would be changing the campaign.