APPLE | AirPods Pro 2 Hearing Aid Feature | 2025
The Day Earbuds Became a Medical Device / APPLE "AirPods Pro 2 Hearing Aid Feature"
Earbuds became an FDA-cleared hearing aid. What's interesting is that it's the product itself winning the award, not an ad.
The problem
Hearing aids were a category needed by an estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide, yet held back by cost and psychological barriers to adoption. Apple chose to add a medical function purely through software, built on top of hardware it already had: the AirPods Pro 2.
The insight
The key shift was thinking: "you shouldn't have to go to a hospital—the earbuds you already own should just become your hearing aid." Rather than getting people to buy a new, dedicated medical device, the core idea was solving the problem through an update to a product already in people's hands.
The idea
The system was developed through roughly a year of collaboration with the Chicago Hearing Society, involving in-person research along with hands-on testing and refinement by members of the deaf community. What came out of it was a single device that handles everything from a hearing test, to generating a personalized hearing profile, to real-time sound amplification.
What happened
The judges praised the seriousness and scale of the design testing, the ten-month verification process, and the feature's potential for further growth going forward. It won Gold in the Design category at the 2025 Cannes Lions.
Afterthought
Advertising work tends to get framed as a question of "how do you communicate it," but this is a case where "how do you build it" was itself what got recognized. Once you learn that behind this quiet feature update were hundreds of people's ears and a year of testing, it changes how you look at it.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2025
