Creativity in healthcare

1. Creativity In Healthcare ?
Medulla Communications' Praful Akali says advertising in the
healthcare space has always been creative. And if one looks
past preconceived notions you`ll see it, too

2. Contd…
For the past 15 years, while work ing in healthcare advertising and marketing, I've
constantly been asked “What are you doing in healthcare? Do you like it?“ (Read,
“Aren't you bored out of your mind? You don't look like a geek to me!“) I've been a
little surprised by this question because some of the most effective and creative
advertising campaigns I've seen have often been in healthcare. The Pulse Polio
campaign that eradicated polio in the country and saved millions of lives was
healthcare advertising. Doesn't Ogilvy still show off its work on this campaign?
If you look back to one of Amitabh Bachchan's most memorable advertising
campaigns wouldn't `Do boond zindagi ki' come to mind? If AIDS has been
controlled in the country, shouldn't Balbir Pasha get a lot of that credit? Even in the
80s, family planning was finally not achieved through mandatory “nasbandhi“ but
through advertising. Child mortality below five was controlled through the ORS
advertising campaigns and not by building more primary healthcare centres. If
these are not effective advertising campaigns I don't know what is.

3. Contd…
That answers the effectiveness question. But can healthcare advertising be
creative? The Haathipaon campaign from the Indian Ministry of Health & Family
Welfare or Lifebuoy's `Help a child reach five' all have unquestionable creativity at
their core. For the last few decades, healthcare advertising has constantly been
winning at the Cannes Lions and across awards against the biggest mainline brands.
Even now, agencies want to work with NGOs on causes like organ donation or
cancer prevention because they feel it'll give them a better shot at awards. Isn't all
of this healthcare ad vertising? And with Medulla being an nounced as the #3
Healthcare Agency of the Year 2015 at Cannes Lions Health and probably becoming
one of the first Indian agencies to come in the Top 3 in any section of the Cannes
Lions, we've proven that Indian healthcare advertis ing is just as creative as any
across the world.
I've, in fact, asked myself the opposite question why does healthcare advertising
find it so easy to win the biggest creative awards? And the simple answer is
healthcare advertising has the power to change lives.

4. Contd…
In fact, the tagline of the Cannes Lions Health (launched in 2014, the first industry-
specific advertising awards at Cannes) is `Life-changing creativity' so they've
obviously recognised this, too. The best advertising folks and awards have now for
several years been rewarding ads that have the power to change lives so
healthcare advertising which can monumentally change and save lives has the
potential to be extremely powerful.
For instance, Medulla's Last Words campaign that had nurses recounting the most
heart-rending last words that they had ever heard to drive the message of palliative
care for the Indian Association of Palliative Care inspired the Human Rights
Commissioner to state, “If dignity of life is a human right, so should dignity of
death.“ In fact, Brand Equity described it as “Among the most affecting films you'll
see all year...“
So why do most of us think of healthcare advertising as boring? Let's look at some
of the typically stated barriers in healthcare advertising regulatory constraints,
complexity of messaging or the need for medical sanctity.

5. Contd…
When Amit (Akali, my brother ex-NCD at Grey, and now running his own agency, What's
Your Problem, a digital problem-solving agency and also the Chief Creative Officer at
Medulla) came from mainline advertising into the healthcare specialist space, we realised
that all these barriers were often in the head. Regulatory barriers mean you can't use the
brand name for consumer patient communication but how many mainline brands allow
you to sell a cause and not a brand, or how often do creative folk not have a brand
manager insist on enlarging the logo? Amit insists that the complexity of messaging
actually allows you to look at multiple angles and get in a freshness that is tougher to bring
in mainline advertising. And on the need for medical entity, it actually allows you to focus
on ethically-correct responsible advertising that a lot of us forget along the way .
Even when I attended Cannes Lions Health last year, a lot of the award winners had the
same thing to say: Healthcare allows you to create life-changing advertising like no other
sector does and the only barriers that hold us back are often in the head.
The author is founder and director of Medulla Communications. Views ex pressed are
personal

6. For Details and Appointment contact:-
Parveen Kumar Chadha… THINK TANK
(Founder and C.E.O of Saxbee Consultants & Other-Mother
marketingandcommunicationconsultants.com)
Email :-saxbeeconsultants@gmail.com
Mobile No. +91-9818308353
Address:-First Floor G-20(A), Kirti Nagar, New Delhi India Postal Code-
110015