Creativity for its own sake doesn’t really do much for us.
While we are proud to have been widely recognised and awarded for our creativity on the global healthcare arena, to be really, really exciting, creativity has to be effective and deliver real change. Helpful change.
It’s not about a campaign just being memorable or liked. It’s about being relevant, then changing the minds and behaviours of its audience. It needs to achieve what it set out to do. It needs to deliver a meaningful impact.
Making a real difference
What do we mean by meaningful impact? Well, it runs through everything we do, from insights, strategy and briefing to critiquing creative concepts, craft in execution, channel and media selection.
Striving for the most impactful creative campaign isn’t taking the easy road, it’s looking at every potential opportunity to make our concepts the best they can possibly be. A relentless pursuit for brilliant work – not judged by the awards it achieves, but by the tangible differences it makes in the real world.
You can have the best creative campaign in the world, but unless the right people are seeing it at the right time, its potential for meaningful impact is compromised. Media’s a huge part of this. Creative development and media placement are like siblings, each influencing, shaping and bringing out the best in the other.
It’s why we created our AMP (Analytics, Media and Performance) team a few years ago, to help fulfil creative potential through effective audience profiling, targeting, channel and media planning, and performance analytics. Ensuring creative campaigns are seen by the right people, at the right time.
The U=U campaign
This was the case with our U=U campaign we developed with ViiV in 2019. Earlier that year the U=U message had been scientifically proven and endorsed by all of the UK’s leading HIV charities, as well as over 1,000 organisations from 102 different countries.
This was big news, a landmark moment for the HIV community: undetectable = untransmittable. Having an undetectable viral load due to effective treatment means your HIV is undetectable, and you cannot pass the virus on.
Our task was to let people living with HIV know the positive implications of this amazing news. However, many people living with HIV didn’t fully understand what U=U meant, which led to many people not doing anything differently – not talking to their doctors, not talking about more effective treatments, etc.
Seemingly simple, but dealing in a highly emotive area still suffering from stigma and misinformation, it had to be handled appropriately, making sure the message was heard and understood. The challenge and responsibility meant we approached it in a way that ultimately made you feel different about HIV.
The campaign was led by a film starring people living with HIV, aimed at people living with HIV, to communicate the benefits of the U=U message and what this means in their everyday lives, for them and their loved ones.
We see glimpses into the modern day lives of those having to live with the condition, spanning sweet, tender moments to moments that are funny, sexy and personal. All seen in a positive light, showing the benefits of reaching undetectable viral levels.
Simply put, those living with HIV are actually just living.
Improving lives
The media strategy was smart and simple – from cinemas and bus stops to GPs’ waiting rooms, all the placements were in everyday, normal scenarios to reflect the nature of the campaign.
This all sounds good but, as we said earlier, what really matters is whether it improved any lives and played a valuable role in society.
It was endorsed and run by 14 UK HIV charities and the impact of the campaign was instant. On the first day of launch we reached over 50,000 people in the HIV community online, with one of them remarking: “What you have done will change hearts and minds, and my life will be better because of that.”
And over the course of the last year it has helped drive the number of GP appointments from those living with HIV to enquire about more effective treatments. Helping prevent further HIV transmission and protect those living with HIV to live longer, healthier lives.
We’d say that was pretty meaningful, wouldn’t you?
Download Havas Lynx Group’s ‘Media Means Business’ white paper to learn more about meaningful media: www.havaslynx.com/ thought-leadership/media-means-business/
Jon Chapman and Paul Kinsella are the Chief Creative Officers of Havas Lynx Group
