Movember: The month of the Moustache

In 2003 in Australia, the Garone brothers decided to start growing their moustaches in an attempt to bring the badass old-fashion moustache of the 1970’s back onto the faces of twenty first century men. The Garone brothers, along with 30 other men, decided to grow a Mo for the month of November.

In 2004, the men wanted to do it again, grow a Mo for the month, but they needed a reason or an excuse for their month long stache growing mission. Right off the heels of Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, the Garone brothers wondered what would the male equivalent be for Breast Cancer, and just like that they decided that every November, they would grow a Mo to raise money for very important causes: prostate cancer and depression. (Iriondo F, 2012)

The Movember event was launched in South Africa in 2007. Movember aims to:

• Increase early cancer detection
• Increase diagnosis and effective treatments
• Reduce the number of preventable deaths
• Encourage men to be more aware of family history of cancer
• Encourage men to adopt a healthier lifestyle

  Tracx #Movember Overview

We put the #Movember hashtag into Tracx to monitor the global activity surrounding #Movember. We started tracking #Movember on the 1st of November and pulled in data up until the 9th of November .

Have a look at some of the data Tracx pulled in surrounding the hastag #Movember, in just 9 days:

• There were over 130 000 posts relating to just the #Movember hashtag with nearly 2 million interactions
• #Movember was mentioned over 140 000 times
• In just 9 days, the #Movember hastag had become a household name, having a  unique reach just under 1.5 million people
• There were almost 85 000 conversations started about #Movember, each with, on average, a density of 22 people per convo

It’s quite interesting to see that females are slightly more active than men in a campaign angled toward’s the health of men: female activity could be due to an increased involvement of Mo Sistas. Instagram has had the biggest share of the voice across all platforms, making up almost 90% of all posts and interactions with many men taking to the picture sharing platform to share the Mo’s progress.

The United States has contributed to the majority of #Movember activity with many of their bigger states getting involved. There is a substantial  amount of posts and interactions relating to #Movember coming out of the UK.  To be honest, I’m rather disappointed that there has been no #Movember activity from The Isle of Man 😦

With thousands of posts and interactions  generated every minute, awareness  around #Movember 2014 is growing exponentially, with that fateful hashtag making its way to over 400 000 unique sets of eyes.  The Garone brothers went from needing an excuse to grow a moustache for a month to being the founders of the Movember Foundation. Working closely with their  Men’s Health partners, the Movember Foundation has funded 832 projects in 21 countries in the gallant attempt to change the face of men’s health.

As stated on the Movember Foundation’s landing page:

“Mo Bros take action by changing their appearance by growing a moustache for the 30 days of Movember, to spark conversation and raise funds.”

To all the gentlemen sporting a Mo, we’d like to salute you. We have only tracked 9 days of this amazing month and already we can see the world abuzz with Movember conversations. To get involved go to the Movember Foundation website  and make your donation, or join a team and get involved!

Written by: #DRTracy