The Veeva code for this work is GB-38758

Flu can be seriously debilitating not just for children but for local health services. Vaccinating them is proven to reduce hospital admissions by 85%. The effect even spreads to the adults around them, reducing their doctor visits by 63%.

Our brief was to target hard to reach parents and persuade them to get their child vaccinated against flu - despite a lack of urgency and hardening attitudes towards vaccination.

The results of our campaign were striking. Proving that some things just have to be seen (or heard) to be believed.

Half the UK engaged with the campaign

33,300,150 impressions

2,074, 792 interactions

+53% forecast expectations

3,064,876 vaccines given

But most importantly, we changed behaviour, with 79,687 extra kids vaccinated

The "Cave" audio experience dramatizes an all too common, disgusting act even the cutest little angels are known for: picking their noses.

The narrator describes this wet, warm orifice with the detail of an audio book illustrating a picture for the mind's eye, piece by piece. In this case, with SFX. Forcing the listener to hold on for the big reveal: "Dragging a bogey out of their nose is just one way kids spread flu."

Our radio campaign lets radio do what it does best... paint powerful pictures in people’s minds. Collectively, it allows listeners to experience (up close and personal) the most disgusting, repugnant and tangible pictures of nasty, yet common ways flu spreads. The evocative writing was designed to bring to life the dank and damp germ-ridden places that kids have no qualms about visiting. And to do it where it matters most, in the mind.

This radio ad dramatizes a child excavating their nose, complete with visceral (almost ASMR) gooey, slimy, sloppy sound effects.

VO: The cave is dark and dank when she approaches. But she can’t resist venturing into the wet, strangely welcoming, warmth. Inside it’s moist and sticky. Mucous lining the walls around her. The atmosphere fetid and filthy. She knows she shouldn’t be in here, her mum was always saying so. She brushes past something hair-like as she blindly pushes deeper. The gunk everywhere, sticks to her, stretching as she moves. At last, she finds what she’s feeling for. It’s hard but she pulls at it. It’s stuck, the slime doesn’t want to relinquish it. But she pulls it away, stretching a train of unmentionably gross ooze behind it…

VO: Dragging a bogey right out of their nose is just one way kids spread flu.

Look out for the flu vaccine letter from school.

Catch the vaccine, not the flu.

"A Touch of Flu: Theater of the Mind" is a radio campaign for a large, well-established pharmaceutical company. The goal of this work was to successfully increase flu vaccination in the UK (ultimately leading to uptake of a branded vaccine).

MHRA regulations, UK

All parents of vaccine age children in the UK (where flu vaccines are free for all school age children).