High Five: A Tip of the Hat to Healthcare
It is all too easy to get caught up in the daily hustle and bustle of agency life and therefore miss the opportunity to pause and reflect on how powerful and creative some of the communications is in the healthcare space. The invitation to contribute to High Five gave me the chance to carve out some time with my leadership team (creative director Mike Pogson, planning and strategy director Mark Ralphs, and creative services director Sarah Spain) to do exactly that. We reviewed a host of campaigns from around the world, eventually agreeing on the following executions for their ability to demonstrate the power of a genuine insight executed to evoke maximum emotional response...
Estonian Sexual Health Association - '14 Is Not Okay'
Agency & Production: Optimist
I think this campaign is a reminder of the power a creative agency can have when it comes to resetting social norms. What other industry is there where you have this crazy mix of tools and intellects and creativity? If we can apply them to changing things for the better then we should. And that’s what this campaign does. Not only did it change people’s opinion, it changed the law.
Canesten - 'The Truth, Undressed'
Agency: AnalogFolk London
Still in the space of sexual health, I’m a big fan on this work from AnalogFolk. Despite our obsession with sex, we’re still woefully ill-informed about our own bodies. This campaign does a lot to address that, not by shying away from the topic, but by diving in headfirst with an honest look at what’s normal and what’s not. It’s everything you never left your sex education classes with.
Danish Road Safety Council - 'Helmet Has Always Been a Good Idea'
Agency: The North Alliance
Production: new-land
Combining humour with a conversation about somebody’s wellbeing has the potential to help your work land in all the wrong ways. But treat it too gravely and it becomes horribly worthy. So I particularly like this piece for making us laugh, leaving us with a critically important safety message, and - perhaps most importantly of all, given this is advertising - for selling a product.
The Right to Power - '47 Seconds'
Agency: Publicis Groupe ME & T
Production: Prodigious MEA
The Right to Power's '47 Seconds' is just such a strong piece of work, playing out in real-time the fatal consequences of the regular power blackouts that Lebanon has had to endure for the past 47 years. It’s not easy viewing, but the way it’s been put together tells their story with maximum impact and without it being insensitive. That’s a fine line to thread and it’s been done well here.
Dell Technologies and Intel - 'I Will Always Be Me'
Agency: VMLY&R New York
Production: Borderland
This last piece of work is a beautiful and poignant example of what happens when you combine technology with creativity. It’s an incredibly powerful yet intuitive tool to help sufferers of motor neurone disease ‘bank’ their voice before they lose it. Increasingly we’re seeing these sorts of larger-scale collaborations between artists, tech companies, engineering houses, creative studios, and I think that’s when the really interesting stuff happens, when you step out of the space you know and start mixing with other disciplines.
