Anyone who hasn’t seen make-up free selfie after selfie appearing on their social media feeds recently must have had their eyes firmly shut.

In the past fortnight, social media has been awash with selfies of bare faced women, all posting pictures of themselves completely make-up free and then nominating their friends to do the same in a bid to raise money for Cancer Research. Even one of us Soupers, a self-confessed hater of the selfie, has taken part. The other, I might add, has donated, but just couldn’t bring herself to point a camera directly at her face and take the shot.

But, despite our dislike of the traditional selfie, this has been a brilliant charity PR campaign. It’s the best example of crowd-sourced content going viral and generating real results – over £8m so far – we’ve ever seen. Celebrities far and wide also seem to think so and have shown their full support, putting vanity to one side and proudly showing off their bare faced beauty to the world.  Even the national media have gone crazy and the news has been full of features about the make-up free selfie phenomenon that’s swept the nation.  

The best thing about this campaign is that it’s for such an excellent cause, which is no doubt the key reason it worked so well. There’s nothing like a bit of peer pressure on Facebook to make you take notice of an issue and get involved. Well done Cancer Research for coming up with such a brilliant PR idea and raising much needed cash that will be used to help fund further research into combatting the disease.