He wants to help men beat cancer ‘through the universal language of beer’
It wasn’t enough for Rick Lyke to beat prostate cancer. He wanted to help other men beat it, too.
That’s why the Charlotte resident started Pints for Prostates in 2008 after successfully treating his cancer. Since then, he’s traveled all over the world to “reach men through the universal language of beer.”
The problem is that Lyke can’t be everywhere at once. Pints for Prostates is a grassroots organization with just one paid employee (not Lyke), and the funds it raises go primarily to provide free testing, support programs or awareness campaigns.
The nonprofit’s new Crowns for a Cure campaign, however, will help get it in front of hundreds of thousands of beer drinkers this year. Through the program, Pints for Prostates has distributed more than 1.6 million bottle caps to more than 40 craft breweries across the country. Bottles bearing the bright blue caps will hit shelves in September, which is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.
“What the crowns allow us to do is to get places where we haven’t been able to hold an event,” said Lyke.
North Carolina has four participating breweries: Foothills Brewing, Mother Earth Brewing, Olde Hickory Brewery and Charlotte’s own The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery.
Pints for Prostates has had a good relationship with OMB, which opened the year after Lyke started the organization.
“Olde Meck has been a great supporter for Pints for Prostates going back a number of years,” said Lyke. “They’ve hosted several events for us and they’re involved with Crowns for a Cure.”
The brewery was also one of 14 to participate in a test program of Crowns for a Cure last year. Because they had to order the bottle caps in pallets of 400,000 at a time, Lyke wanted to make sure the campaign resonated with people before instituting it on a larger scale. The feedback, especially on social media, was better than he anticipated.
“The social media reaction to it was really above our expectations,” said Lyke. “We decided this year we were going to try to do at least a million caps.”
A photo posted by oldemeckbrew (@oldemeckbrew) on Aug 15, 2016 at 1:53pm PDT
At OMB, people are already asking when they can get their hands on some of the newly-capped bottles of Copper.
“The question we receive most often about the crowns is ‘when?’” said OMB’s marketing manager, Jocelyn Ruark, in an e-mail. “When are they going to be in stores? When can I get my own? It’s a great awareness campaign because everyone wants one.”
Several breweries expressed an interest in participating after seeing last year’s test campaign.
“We had a lot of breweries that said, ‘Hey, if you do this again, count us in,’” said Lyke. “Some of these breweries have brewers or management who are prostate cancer survivors, so some of them wanted in.”
While OMB is the only Charlotte brewery participating, NoDa Brewing has allowed the organization to store the pallets of caps at its brewery the last two years.
This year, Pints for Prostates is asking people to tag their photos with #CrownsforaCure and @pints4prostates, along with the name of the brewery that made the beer. It’s a more aggressive call-to-action, and one that Lyke said is needed.
“Prostate cancer is about 33 percent more common in men than breast cancer is in women, but that’s a statistic that’s kind of lost on the world,” said Lyke. “Last year I went through a grocery store in October and found it on everything from cat food to melons. You just don’t see the blue ribbon in September like you do the pink ribbon in October.”
Lyke hopes the new campaign will raise awareness by starting a conversation, and not just among the 35-55 age range that should pursue testing. He wants to reach younger men to raise awareness before they get to that age, and he wants to reach female drinkers who can encourage their male friends and family members to get tested.
“It puts a cap in their hand and it causes a conversation to happen,” said Lyke. “And that’s what our campaign is all about, is getting guys talking about this disease.”
Photos: Pints for Prostates, The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery.
This story was originally published August 17, 2016 at 10:02 PM with the headline "He wants to help men beat cancer ‘through the universal language of beer’."