Pro-Breastfeeding Ads Come With Produce-Style Freshness Stickers for Your Boobs (NSFW)

Breasts and supermarket produce go well together in advertising lately.

A few month ago, we saw melons in a grocery store made up to look like breasts for a breast cancer awareness campaign. Now, we've got the opposite—produce-style freshness stickers that new moms can attach to their boobs as part of a pro-breastfeeding campaign. 

BooneOakley in Charlotte, N.C., agency created the campaign, and is handing out the stickers—as well as related wall posters—free of charge to any "baby-friendly" hospitals that want to use them. Along with giving info about the health benefits of breastfeeding, the stickers also have a practical purpose—nursing moms can place them on one breast at a time to remind them which breast to feed their baby from next.

The stickers carry a "100% natural" claim, along with the line, "The best nutrition for your baby is you." They come in three colors, with three different health messages—claiming that breastfeeding reduces a baby's risk of obesity by 24 percent, of SIDS by 36 percent, and of asthma by 26 percent. 

You can see the posters below, each of which shows one large photo of a woman's breast with a sticker attached. There is no other copy. In casting the ads, the agency looked for non-professional models who were either pregnant or nursing. Anatomically, the goal was to show varied, full and real-looking (not "perfect") breasts. 

We're obliged to tell you the posters are NSFW, but the agency says they're plenty safe for hospitals. "We're so used to breasts being sexualized. But to a newborn, it's nutrition. You don't censor fruits and vegetables, do you?" copywriter Mary Gross tells us.

Actually, BooneOakley did censor the campaign twice—during the developmental stages. While creating the work, they had a "breast wall" at the agency covered with about 100 photos. The entire wall had to be taken down twice for client visits. 

The campaign was an internal project, with no client involved. Gross and her art director partner Kara Noble, neither of whom have kids, were talking with a BooneOakley account woman who is a new mom—and who confided how difficult breastfeeding can be, not so much socially but physically. The campaign is meant to provide encouragement to such moms by outlining the health benefits, to the baby, of persevering. 

"And," Gross adds, "Kara and I both have breasts."

CREDITS

Agency: BooneOakley

Creative Directors: David Oakley, Jim Mountjoy

Art Director: Kara Noble

Copywriter: Mary Gross

Design Director: Eric Roch von Rochsburg

Photographer: Greg Slater, Atlanta

Casting Director: Kimberly Fulton