Overview

Stress is the invisible killer with few physical symptoms until it manifests as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic, life-threatening illnesses. Without these tangible signs, people rarely take preventative measures against stress. As leaders in the world of Stress Care, Cigna tasked us to make people see stress differently. We created breakthrough technology to access an individual’s real-time biometric data and transform it into a stunning portrait of the stress affecting their body at that particular moment – a medical first. By capturing and recording the data from people's own bodies, the world can now see their stress for the first time and take control.

Background

Cigna's Global 360 Wellbeing Survey indicates that 87% of the world is stressed. On top of that, The World Health Organisation believes that chronic stress is a leading cause of 41 million preventable deaths per year - due to the physical effects stress has on the body. The problem is that the signs of physical stress are often invisible until they become chronic, making it difficult for people to act on something they can't see.

We were tasked with creating a public service announcement, launching a global ‘Stress Care’ Platform for Cigna’s international markets. With low brand awareness in many of these markets, our PSA needed to cut through category noise and starkly contrast with predictable health insurance campaigns that are regularly based on fear-mongering.

The Creative Idea

The physical effects of Chronic Stress are deadly. They are also invisible to see until it manifests into serious illness. So how are people supposed to act on something so serious, if they cannot see the early signs affecting the body? As a Healthcare company that prides itself on pro-active wellcare, Cigna challenged us to make the invisible, unmissable. Working closely with doctors, technologists, and 3D artists, we developed Stress Portraits - The World's First Stress Visualisation Experience. The experience transforms an individual's biometric data into a stunning real-time portrait of stress affecting their body, at that very moment. Each stunning 4K, 2 million particles, 36,000 frames per second portrait could be printed, emailed, and shared on social media, with aim of starting a conversation around physical stress and inspiring people to act on their stress at Cigna’s free Stress Care hub.

The Strategy

Over a nine-month journey, we created technology that visualizes biometric ‘stress’ data as unforgettable, real-time 3D motion portraits. The key challenge was creating the tech that could gather data in real-time and project it back uniquely to each individual. First, we did extensive medical research to identify three strings of biometric data that best interpret stress in the body accurately. But presenting real-time data as numbers and graphs would not be engaging or emotive enough to bring action. So we then developed a striking motion art style inspired by ever-changing natural elements. Each effect was triggered and manipulated by the real-time data feeding into the algorithm. Colour and turbulence are affected by brainwaves. Sparks and flashes are affected by skin conductivity. Flashes and lightness are affected by heart-rate variation.

How Technology Enhanced Our Creative Output

For the first time, we had managed to bring three vital biodata metrics together to paint a stunning image of their stress in real-time. The big problem was, we needed this technology to be portable so it could travel to key markets and work for hours on end, whilst also printing and sharing portraits virtually to individuals after completion via a bespoke email. To do this we developed bespoke software, driven by 3D engines and enabled by an in-built render farm, with dozens of pieces of custom hardware fitting into a shoebox-sized, plug-and-play kit. Each individual’s stress readings dictate the colour formations, turbulence and live visual effects, with each portrait consisting of 20 million uniquely settling particles in 36,000 live-rendered frames per second. 10 kits have been built and have so far toured 12 of the most stressed places around the world (based on Cigna’s Annual Global Wellbeing Survey).

The Data-Driven Results

- US$26M+ IN EARNED MEDIA VALUE

- OVER 150,000 UNIQUE PORTRAITS GENERATED SO FAR AT THE TIME OF ENTRY

- 187% INCREASE IN STRESS-RELATED BUSINESS LEADS COMPARED TO THE YEAR BEFORE

- OVER 2.5 MILLION UNIQUE VISITS TO THE CIGNA STRESS CARE HUB AT TIME OF ENTRY