HER Disease

Everyone knows that men die of heart disease. But dangerously few know that women do too. In fact, it kills 23,000 women in the UK every year - twice as many as breast cancer. Shocking, but true. To raise awareness of the issue, we turned heart disease (generally seen as a man's disease) into something new and unforgettable: 'HER disease'. By effectively repositioning the UK's biggest killer of women, we made a clear and memorable connection between the problem and the audience, and brought it to life in a way that couldn't be ignored: the key execution shows a woman who has collapsed in such a way that her head and arm are obscuring the A and the T of the word 'heart', revealing the all-important phrase: 'HER disease'.



We made the campaign pro bono, and persuaded actors Jodie Whitaker and Mark Strong to donate their voices, and JC Decaux and News International to share premium media space. The campaign made it to national headlines, an ITN documentary, and even saved a life.



According to research carried out by Heart Research UK, there were 33.2 million TVC impacts, with the campaign as a whole reaching over 55 million people in the UK. Engagement was high, with 99.3% completions recorded. A OnePulse survey showed that on seeing the commercial, 57% of women were more inclined to get their cholesterol checked, and 59% more inclined to get their blood pressure checked. The objective of the campaign was to raise awareness of heart disease in women, and encourage them to visit the website to learn the symptoms. After launch, website visits increased by 83% compared to the previous quarter, and by 153% year on year, with the 'know the symptoms' pages the most visited throughout the campaign. A member of the public wrote to the charity to say that her life had been saved as a direct result of the campaign - a fact of which we're extremely proud.