Tracking Movember’s perception shift from cultural moment to year-round movement

We teamed up with Movember to explore how they’re using brand health data to reshape their public perception and create a lasting impact on men’s healthcare.

Meet Movember

Movember is a global charity tackling men’s healthcare issues, including prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health, and suicide prevention. Since their 2003 founding, the Australian 501(c)(3) nonprofit has expanded to the US, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Canada to fund more than 1,300 men’s healthcare projects.

Moving beyond the moustaches that made Movember famous

For over 20 years, Movember has done incredible work to redefine how healthcare systems reach and support men. But after Movember’s November moustache-growing phenomenon went viral in 2006, they started to wonder if people knew about their year-round charity efforts.

To do this, Movember needed to escape their team’s internal echo chamber and properly drill down on public perception. So, with the help of the Movember Insight team, Head of Marketing Campaigns, Andrew Mook, turned to Tracksuit for a data-backed snapshot of their brand’s performance. After surveying over 6,000 people across Movember’s five markets, Tracksuit uncovered two key opportunities to boost their image:

1. Driving unaided awareness: When asked to name popular charities, people didn’t immediately think to list Movember.
2. Shifting common associations: When asked what they thought of Movember, people often associated the nonprofit with the novelty moustache-growing event — not their ample healthcare projects.

These insights explained why Movember still received 95% of their donations in November, despite the team’s year-round work — like investing in biomedical research projects and funding men’s mental health advocacy.

By tracking these two brand health metrics (unaided awareness and brand associations), Movember could bring in donations year-round and improve the nonprofit’s cash flow with insight-backed, targeted campaigns. With Tracksuit, Andrew and Movember’s Insights team got to work building a strategy to prove Movember was more than the sum of their moustaches.

“After seeing the success of our moustache campaign across multiple markets, we knew there was a massive untapped opportunity to make a systemic change in men’s healthcare. Onboarding Tracksuit and measuring our brand’s awareness was step one in making that happen. Now, we use the platform’s insights to refine our marketing initiatives and reach a wider audience.” – Andrew Mook

Driving intentional change using brand health data

Leveraging awareness data from Tracksuit’s brand health dashboard, Andrew and his team launched a new campaign in their UK market. Their goal? Reshaping Movember’s public perception.

Dubbed “The Real Face of Men's HealthOpens in new tab,” this campaign highlighted the nonprofit’s role as a year-round force for change. It also targeted more than just men — raising awareness for men’s healthcare issues among families, friends, and communities.

Even better, with Tracksuit, they can keep tracking their brand health post-campaign too. Unlike traditional survey methods, which only reflect a moment in time, Tracksuit continuously tracks brand health insights, including unprompted awareness, brand associations, and performance across multiple demographics.

With this ongoing data stream, Movember quantifies how their brand performs in real time. This enables them to measure how each marketing effort — from The Real Face campaign to their regular November campaign — drives awareness.

Now, Movember can clearly identify which aspects resonate with supporters throughout the funnel, from awareness to donation. Plus, by filtering Tracksuit’s insights to focus specifically on the UK, Movember has optimised each campaign to strategically improve performance in this critical market.

“Most brands rely on qualitative metrics to see how they stack up against the competition. But Tracksuit’s dashboard takes things a step further. It quantifies brand health, measures brand associations, and identifies opportunities to correct market misconceptions.”

Proving the value of brand-building

Thanks to Tracksuit’s insights into both The Real Face and regular November campaigns, Movember saw a 6% boost in awareness in the UK market within four months — outperforming other charities whose awareness held steady in that timeframe.

Movember’s efforts to target a wider audience have also (literally) paid off. Among women, they saw higher consideration rates and a 7% lift in awareness. This has led to a 3% increase in funds raised across the Movember campaign — which the nonprofit will use to fund impact projects to create healthier men and a healthier world.

And the best part? For the first time since tracking their brand health, people surveyed by Tracksuit started naming Movember in October 2024 when asked to come up with a list of charities — without being prompted.

“Brand health data is especially crucial for charities who run primarily on perception. People raise funds because they care deeply about the cause the brand stands for, and want to do their part to create that change.”

Looking forward: Supercharging a men’s healthcare movement

Empowered by the early results in the UK market, Andrew and his team plan to double down on their new “always on” approach to building brand awareness. Rather than resting on the success of their trademark November campaign, they’re using Tracksuit’s insights to inform every new marketing initiative and sharpen their marketing strategy.

“Tracksuit helped us realise that moving people from awareness to consideration is never-ending work that relies on a steady stream of available data,” Andrew says. “No business should make assumptions about how their brand is perceived — especially not a nonprofit. Marketers like myself need brand perception data to keep us accountable.”

And that’s exactly what Andrew plans to do. In 2025, the Movember team is planning to roll out The Real Face campaign across all five markets. With a scalable foundation for tracking the brand’s perceptions, Movember exceeded their 2024 donation goal well ahead of schedule and has set a record-breaking goal for the year ahead.

“Without Tracksuit’s in-depth insights, we wouldn’t have gotten on so many people’s radars as a prominent charity. Next, we plan to tap into that awareness as much as possible and use the platform to fuel our fight for systemic changes in men’s healthcare.”