Ladies, meet Cam. He’s a normal suburbanite kind of kid, but one with a message. He cares about your breasts. He wants to make sure you are all self-testing at least once a month, and if you don’t know how, he’ll show you. Hell, he’ll even do it for you.

If you don’t know who Cam is yet, don’t worry – you will. He is all over the airwaves as the new quasi-spokesperson for the Breast Cancer Society to help create awareness about the need for women to self-test for any displaced or unusual lumps and catch breast cancer before it’s too late.

‘Cam’ (the name of the character and the psa he is featured in) is the creation of Toronto agency Zig Inc. Zig co-creative directors and partners Elspeth Lynn and Lorraine Tao believe Cam is the perfect chap to help in the quest to prevent breast cancer. According to Tao (copywriter to Lynn’s art direction), the team set out to create a psa that would not be forgettable or frightening to women.

‘One of our hopes was to create a spot that didn’t use scare tactics,’ says Tao. ‘The thing we thought was most important was to get women to self-test and to make that part of their routine. The spot wasn’t about scaring women into it, because we know people don’t necessarily react well to those.’

Tao and Lynn decided humor was the best way to go and brought in old friend John Mastromonaco to helm the spot. Repped by Jolly Roger in Canada, l.a.-based Mastromonaco last worked with the ladies of Zig when they all collaborated on the Bessie-winning Vaseline Intensive Care campaign last year, when Tao and Lynn were still at Ammirati Puris Lintas.

‘Cam,’ a 60-second psa (with two 30-second versions also finished), was shot on location in a house that presumably belongs to Cam’s parents. It is presented as a sort of a spoof infomercial and begins with a young man in his late teens who sincerely wants to help women in the prevention of breast cancer by selflessly offering his services in the testing department. He offers his services to any lady who feels she needs to be tested but either doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to. With a gaggle of slack-jawed friends manning the single telephone waiting for a call, Cam offers a toll-free number that women can call to set up an appointment.

‘We wanted to make it seem ridiculous that they weren’t doing it as opposed to telling them they are going to die if they don’t do it,’ says Tao.

Because of his experience on the Vaseline campaign, Mastromonaco was anxious to work with Tao and Lynn again, saying he was attracted to this spot by the quality of the script more than anything else.

The director, like the creative team, was keen on changing the way people see psas, especially one to do with breast cancer.

‘Generally you see something very morbid,’ he says. ‘I think what makes this thing interesting is people are actually going to listen to it, and maybe for the first few seconds, actually think it is legitimate. Bottom line is it works. It makes women think about doing their monthly self breast exam.’

Tao says one of the reasons she and Lynn were anxious to get Mastromonaco on the project was because of his casting instincts, which they considered paramount to the ‘Cam’ spot.

‘It’s amazing,’ says Tao of Mastromonaco’s eye for the right talent. ‘He thinks of things we wouldn’t necessarily think about. In this situation, in particular, we started off by casting early 20s to early 30s, and when we got that original round of casting back, it was clear that the younger spectrum was the way to go. John convinced us to try casting even younger to make sure there was the innocence there, and he was absolutely right.’

Mastromonaco says it was important to cast a young man to play Cam, although many gentlemen who were perhaps pushing 30 or at least looked it, found their way to the auditions.

‘We had to do a few castings to find the right talent,’ says Mastromonaco. ‘We really thought the way to do it was have the guy really feign interest and play the sensitive ‘I’m going to help you’ sort of a guy, which women really respond well to. He had to be young enough that there wasn’t a creep factor involved. If he was too old then you’d end up saying, that’s creepy – he’s too old. You wouldn’t find him as charming.’

Landing the role of Cam was 20-year-old Noah Plenner.

Tao believes this light take on a sensitive subject will be received warmly. She was pleased by the reaction of her client and looks forward to the reaction from television viewers. Mastromonaco, too, is pleased with the results.

He adds the humorous direction Zig chose to take was a wise one and viewers should appreciate the freshness of the ad.

‘Humor connects,’ he says. ‘In my estimation humor always seems to work. It allows people to think about something without having a mallet smashed over their heads.’

Sean Valentini served as dop on ‘Cam’, with Barry Farrell editing at Smash. *