Excellence in Media Relations

Summary of work

Right now, more than 300,000 people in the UK are living with a lifelong disease that many people have never heard of. In fact, the real number could be almost double that. Many of the people in the UK living with Crohn’s or Colitis feel that there’s a lack of awareness, empathy and understanding of their condition.

In My Shoes: 24 Hours with Crohn’s or Colitis – by Crohn’s & Colitis UK and Takeda – is an immersive app that enables people to step in the shoes of someone living with Crohn’s or Colitis.

The multichannel media campaign to support the launch of the app resulted in 23,000 downloads of In My Shoes, over 200 media stories and a social reach of more than 700,000 people. This led to a 27% increase in both empathy and understanding of Crohn’s and Colitis and a significant decrease (almost 50%) in apathy towards the impact that these conditions can have on daily life.

It Takes Guts to talk about Crohn’s and Colitis and this media campaign ignited that conversation.

Judges' comments

In My Shoes was based on real stories and they made sure they showed a wide variety of angles. It had tenacity and was flexible and agile, adapting to the news agenda. It is a good example of immersive media planning.