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 "Wrestling" audio experience dramatizes a teen activity parents already fear - let alone with flu going around: making out.

The narrator describes this awkward, unfamiliar humid void with the vigor of a play-by-play colour commentator piecing together a picture in your mind. Forcing the listener to hold on for the big reveal: "Tongue wrestling. Just one way your teenagers spread flu."

Our radio campaign lets radio do what it does best... paint powerful pictures with words and sounds. 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: They venture forth into the awkward, unfamiliar, humid void. Moving tentatively the clamminess cloying all around them. Feeling their wet way through the sodden space towards each other. Then the wrestling starts. Dripping and drenched, their soused selves encircling. Exploring each other and the vastness of the sopping expanse around them. Meeting, touching, sloppy and soaking, jostling and slipping for position, retreating then bumping together again. Coagulating. Swapping back and forth, oblivious to the increasingly saturated environment. Round and round, the warm mist of their endeavours swirling, until someone surrenders. Backing off until the next balmy bout.

VO: Tongue wrestling. Just one way your teenager spreads the 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).