Subverting the chemical process causing gout to instead crystallise a three-dimensional scaffold of a gout patient, turning this misunderstood condition against itself by externalising its hidden nature and creating a dramatic visual representation that’s impossible to ignore.

A real, physical, life-size crystallised model of a gout patient was created using 4,000 kg of magnesium sulphate and served as a platform for the gout patient in whose likeness it was created to come face to face with a side of his condition he hadn’t known about.

This was taken into the digital space with an immersive experience that brought the story to life through a dynamically generated WebGL visualisation of the crystalline body. Hotspots embedded throughout the site and accompanying documentary film revealed bite-sized information, which then dropped into a deeper medical story.

Target was healthcare professionals across Europe. Primarily primary care physicians, as well as rheumatologists, who are often the ones responsible for the treatment of this condition. The vision of the CHANGE GOUT campaign was to ensure market readiness for the launch of a new treatment, the first innovation in the treatment of Gout in over 20 years. To drive a paradigm shift in the treatment of gout by changing how the world sees a condition, that since medieval times, has been portrayed as a lifestyle disease causing bouts of pain in fingers and toes with entrenched apathetic attitudes and often ineffectual treatment regimes. The approach taken was to launch the CHANGE GOUT campaign 6 months prior to the launch of the new treatment in each of the key 15 European markets, with launch readiness KPIs that needed to be achieved in each market prior to the new treatment's launch.

In the first 8 months, the website attracted 250,000 unique views and 14,000 unique views of the documentary, and average visit times were close to three minutes.

In addition to the targeted audience, the innovative way the website experience brought the content to life was picked up by the design community and shared extensively through design blogs and organically through social media on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, VKontakte (Russia), and Naver (Korea). Helping take a low priority and often misunderstood condition into public debate.

Gout is seen by healthcare professionals as a lifestyle disease that causes bouts of pain in fingers and toes. In fact it is a disease of crystal deposition, causing serious long-term consequences for the whole body. But these crystals are hard to see, and when something is hard to see, it’s easy to ignore.

The brief was to prepare the European market for the launch of a new drug to treat gout by waking people up to the serious nature of the condition and the importance of appropriate long-term treatment to prevent its debilitating physical impact.

The objective of The Change Gout Campaign was to challenge existing misconceptions and ineffectual prescribing habits of healthcare professionals by shocking them into action with a visual demonstration of the hidden side of a condition they can’t normally see.