Live from Cannes Lions Health: One of the major themes in life-changing creativity at Cannes Lions this year is campaigns and programs invested in everyday support. Brands are, as Todd Henwood, one of our creative directors, says “living in” to creating experiences that change patients’ real lives.
Three examples demonstrate that new commitment: a resume that brings cancer patients’ real experience to the forefront, an alarm clock that helps people fight another day, and a newspaper that just makes getting information easier no matter how well you can see.
Let’s start with resume.
The Unstoppable Resume from Cancer@Work was built to tackle the barriers that HR recruitment software creates for people who’ve missed time from career and work due to a battle against cancer. It turns out that some 95% of multinationals and half of new businesses use applicant tracking systems. These smart software sleuths can automatically pass on resumes that show inactivity or blank spots in career continuity. Many cancer survivors and thrivers have just those issues on their resumes. That could be why 70% of cancer survivors are still looking for employment 2 years after diagnosis.
The Unstoppable Resume is a platform that helps people who have fought cancer fight software discrimination. It’s fueled by the most commonly searched soft skills and tons of testimonials about what a fight against cancer taught individuals. The platform combines those two and help patients create the language to share their real-life experience for all it will be worth to those employers. 10,000 resumes have already been generated.
Get Up Alarm Clock
Speaking of cancer, in the middle of the fight, how hard can it be to get up and do it again every day? The treatments, the doctors, the pain and discomfort. It’s one thing to face the diagnosis, it’s another to battle the later stages of the disease.
Eli Lilly wanted to make it easier for people to get up and fight. So, it went to where they wake up: the bedroom. The Get Up Alarm Clock sits on a bedside table and connects to a patient’s Twitter account. Every morning, when the alarm goes off, inspirational messages from friends and family are projected on the ceiling.
It work through a custom DM inbox on Twitter. Patients can invite friends and family to join and every message they send – including photos and videos – is projected to start the day with new motivation.
Smartread
Bayer’s research showed that most patients who live with macular conditions prefer print as a medium, but the degeneration in their eyesight prevents them from being able to see most magazines and newspapers well.
Bayer partnered with Royal National Institute of the Blind to create the first long-form publication these patients had been able to read since their condition progressed. Smartread has oversize type, carefully collected fonts, high contrast colors, low reflective stock, and very simple design elements. Together, they create clarity and contrast that brings the news back into focus to empower a vulnerable audience with a tool that makes what they want to do possible.
