Subject
25 articles
NOVARTIS | RELAX YOUR TIGHT END | 2026
Who knew the football position "tight end" could be turned into a health awareness message? That tightness in your chest might actually be your heart.
ACKO | TAILOR TEST | 2025
An Indian tailor finds the risk of heart disease with nothing but a measuring tape. He measures your waist and hips, and if something seems off, he quietly stamps the bill. On the stamp is a phone number for a free checkup. This is what an insurance company did before it ever tried to sell insurance.
SPECSAVERS | THE MISHEARD VERSION | 2024
They had Rick Astley re-record "Never Gonna Give You Up" with the lyrics deliberately swapped for commonly misheard versions, then released it with no explanation at all. It got 20 million plays in 8 hours. At Cannes it won six Lions and two Grand Prix. It was the first time a PR agency had won the PR Lions Grand Prix on its own.
EUROFARMA | SCROLLING THERAPY | 2023
Parkinson's disease slowly erases facial expressions. People lose the ability to smile, to look surprised. But this app turns the scrolling time everyone already wastes every day into a tool for getting those muscles back.
SPINNEYS THE LEBANESE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION | THE BREAD EXAM | 2020
The motion of kneading bread dough and the motion of a breast self-exam. They turned out to be nearly identical. That one observation was enough to break through a cultural taboo.
COPI | ADDRESSPOLLUTION.ORG | 2020
When you buy a house, someone tells you if there's asbestos. But nobody tells you how dirty the air is. The moment I noticed that imbalance, I couldn't help but growl.
GSK GLAXOSMITHKLINE | BREATH OF LIFE | 2019
Blow on your phone, and a tree painted in ink wash grows before your eyes. It's beautiful, but it's actually a lung function test. Only 7% of COPD cases in China get diagnosed. Turning a life-or-death health check into a piece of traditional art is a brilliant idea.
PURINA | STREET-VET | 2019
Make a sign that dogs can't resist peeing on, then use that pee to check their health. Sounds absurd written out, but it actually makes perfect sense.
MINISTRY OF PUBLIC HEALTH AFGHANISTAN | IMMUNITY CHARM | 2017
When I heard a beaded bracelet won the Grand Prix, I didn't quite get it at first. But the judges called it the "ultimate wearable," and eight of the top ten entries that year were this one piece of work.
UNILEVER (CLEAR) | BULLISH BOSS | 2017
A boss works himself into a rage until he finally shrinks down into a tiny white speck falling onto his own hair. With black-and-white footage and the physical language of butoh dance, this ad lands the message "stress causes dandruff" in one single image.
ITC SAVLON | Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks | 2017
Kids wrote on the blackboard with chalk, and that same chalk let them wash their hands. Here's the story of how soap reached children in rural India.
SAVE THE CHILDREN & SANTILLANA | Paper Glasses | 2016
You open your textbook, and there's a pair of glasses waiting for you. They're made of paper, and they can even test your eyesight. It's so simple it's almost moving.
ALWAYS | INTIMATE WORDS | 2015
If you don't have the words, you can't describe your symptoms. If you can't describe your symptoms, you can't get diagnosed. The indigenous women of Oaxaca had no words to talk about their own bodies.
LIGA CONTRA EL CANCER | Shadow WiFi | 2015
On a beach in Peru stands a big blue wall. Get close, and your phone picks up WiFi on its own. But the signal only reaches inside the shadow the wall creates.
RESPIRATORY APP | Alvio | 2014
Kids with asthma hate breathing exercises. But what if your breath itself became the controller for a game? Alvio made a game where a pufferfish swims just by you breathing in and out.
BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION | HARD, FAST & EFFECTIVE | 2013
People who watched this ad ended up saving 28 lives. An ad whose success gets measured not by awareness or likability, but by "how many people came back from the dead" — that's not something you see every day.
DEUTSCHE AIDS-STIFTUNG | EVERY 18 SECONDS SOMEBODY DIES OF AIDS. | 2012
Eighteen seconds. That's how often someone, somewhere in the world, dies of AIDS. As a number, it's almost too short. And almost too heavy to bear.
GO OUTSIDE MAGAZINE | REPELLENT RADIO | 2012
A radio station in São Paulo secretly mixed a 15kHz tone into its music programming from 6 to 8pm. Humans can't hear it. But mosquitoes can. Since it mimics the sound of a dragonfly's wings—a mosquito's natural predator—the mosquitoes flee. Just by having the radio on, you get bug protection.
HELP REMEDIES | Help I Want to Save a Life | 2012
Open up a bandage, and inside is a bone marrow donor registration kit. The blood from your cut finger, just as it is, might be enough to save a life.
NIKE+ | FuelBand | 2012
This isn't an ad. But an ad agency made it. That contradiction is exactly why it won two Grand Prix at Cannes.
THE TOPSY FOUNDATION | SELINAH | 2010
Just playing the footage in reverse, that's it. But when I heard they kept the camera rolling every single day for 90 days to make that work, I was speechless.
SOYJOY | 低GI | 2009
In a SOYJOY commercial from around 2009, a woman doing yoga has such a beautiful body that I just stopped and stared. Instead of "filling that little hungry gap," I think this direction is overwhelmingly better.
キューサイ | まずい！もう一杯！ | 1990
In 1990, the villain actor Nobuo Yana held up a glass and scrunched up his face. "It's awful!" he said. Then: "One more glass!" I was floored that a health food commercial would go there.
US HEALTHCARE | STAGES OF LIFE | 1988
This film won Gold in 1988, a time when healthcare advertising was still expected to stay understated. Just look at the title: "Stages of Life." The idea is that healthcare is part of every moment of a person's life, from birth to death.
NACAIDS | THE GRIM REAPER | 1988
In 1987, a bowling alley appeared on Australian television. The pins the Grim Reaper's ball knocked down were a mother holding a baby, and children at play. It was pulled off air after just three weeks — one of the most controversial ads in the history of public health.