People with diabetes have to regularly check their blood by pricking their finger with a needle around 4,000 times every year. They hate it. But with the Dexcom G6, those days are over. It monitors blood without any needles at all. That means no more pricks. Our ads highlight this massively important product feature by focusing on the fact that in English, there are two types of annoying prick. A very British voice tells us that because there are so many of one type, we made a diabetes monitoring system without the other type.

In English, a ‘prick’ can mean making a hole with a sharp point – like when someone with diabetes uses a needle to test blood. It is also an insult. ‘Prick’ is something you call an obnoxious, unpleasant and annoying person. In the UK, where these ads ran, it’s a word with strong, divisive impact. In fact, it is banned by mainstream radio stations – which is why we found alternative outlets for our work: Spotify and digital radio stations.

MVO:

In a meeting on January 13th, 2018 at MindHole Creative & Social Agency, Sebastian Prosser said:

What we need is a more hyper-targeted communications paradigm that puts customer love right into the marketing’s genetic code. So let’s peel the data potatah. Because – hey, hello? – the world has changed guys and consumers expect each brand touchpoint to be more storytelling and less story yelling. How did you put it Marcus?

Marcus Huntingdon-Laing replied:

It’s literally like paint my life with your brand and I’ll give you the keys to the canvas.

Sebastian responded:

Preach, brother. Preach.

The world is already full of pricks. So we made a glucose monitoring system for diabetics that doesn’t have any. The Dexcom G6. No needles. No pricks.