Winner
Ask for Clear
Summary of work
Affecting around 125 million people, psoriasis appears as patches of itchy red skin that can cover the entire body. Not only physically debilitating, its appearance often embarrassing.
The good news – thanks to advances in dermatology, clear skin is now possible. The bad news is that, after years of failed treatments, over half of people with psoriasis don’t believe it’s achievable. Our job was to motivate patients to return to their dermatologist to “ask for clear.”
A 9,000-strong patient survey revealed a range of things people would do if they got clear skin, such as shopping, sunbathing and even streaking. So we wanted our campaign to celebrate the joy of clear skin, in all its forms.
With comedy director Nils Gerbens, we created a series of video stings capturing spontaneous moments of joy. One set at the beach features a man dancing with abandonment in what feels like an ‘unscripted’ video moment.
It worked. As part of the campaign, the sting helped generate 268,586 site visitors in six weeks, with the video in particular generating a 20% conversion rate for people returning to their dermatologist.
Judges’ comments
Ask for Clear is creatively very strong, using humour to great effect. It had a set of clearly defined messages for people with moderate-to-severe psoriasis, and spurred them to seek medical advice. It deployed an imaginative mix of media with confidence and a sure touch. Ask for Clear sits at the top of the tree because it captures a real drive to celebrate life. It draws you in because there is genuine humanity in it. Pharma has probably been a bit late in understanding the power of this message, but this campaign’s creativity captures the feeling perfectly.
