Every year, allergy sufferers are forced to deal with nasal congestion induced by weeds, grass, pet hair and other triggers. Yet when someone claims to be an allergy sufferer, their affliction is often dismissed by those who can’t relate to the experience. They’re left to face the problem without empathy, while filtering through a barrage of allergy relief brands to find something that works. We needed to show allergy sufferers that Nasacort is not only a brand that understands their nasal congestion, but one that can offer the relief they truly crave. We partnered with a team of photographers and digital artists to create a series of transit shelter ads and social posts that our target audience would instantly connect with.

The idea was to create a series that clearly captures the feeling of allergy-induced nasal congestion in a single image. One where the viewer could feel what the subject is experiencing just by looking at it. We did this by showing common indoor and outdoor triggers, like ragweed and pet hair, protruding from the nostrils of a displeased victim in an exaggerated way. Each of the ads were released during the seasons when people were most commonly affected by the allergen being displayed in the image. Through this series, our target audience—allergy sufferers ages 18 to 60—could relate to the ad, recognize Nasacort as fast-acting relief, and feel that others could finally fully grasp their misery as a sufferer.

Each portrait combines multiple layers, photographed separately in a studio setting and then digitally composited. We brought real plants and animals into the studio to get the exact positioning required to achieve the result we were seeking. We opted to keep the subjects on a clean background to keep the focus on the expressions of our models and the items protruding from their noses. We felt that a headline wasn’t needed to communicate our message, and decided on a simple tagline.

The “Take Back your Nose” poster campaign performed beyond internal and category benchmarks for the period it was in market.