WHO SPRINKLED SALT ON MY CAKE?

Bronze Spike

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleWHO SPRINKLED SALT ON MY CAKE?
BrandEISAI KOREA
Product / ServiceNOT APPLICABLE
CategoryA05. Health & Wellness Tech
EntrantWEBER SHANDWICK Seoul, SOUTH KOREA
Idea Creation WEBER SHANDWICK Seoul, SOUTH KOREA
Idea Creation 2 McCANN HEALTH Seoul, SOUTH KOREA
PR WEBER SHANDWICK Seoul, SOUTH KOREA
Production WEBER SHANDWICK Seoul, SOUTH KOREA
Additional Company COCO ENTERTAINMENT Seoul, SOUTH KOREA

Credits

Name Company Position
Jay Kim Weber Shandwick Executive Vice President
Insook Park Weber Shandwick Account Director
Minny Mun Weber Shandwick Senior Associate
Martin Han Weber Shandwick Creative Director
JH Yoon Weber Shandwick Creative Director
Wonki Baek Weber Shandwick Senior Producer
Wanny Lim Weber Shandwick Senior Copywriter
Yonah Lee Weber Shandwick Associate Producer
Jaehoon Kim Weber Shandwick Senior Videographer
BH Ahn McCann Health Creative Director
Hyun Lee McCann Health Creative Technologist
Dongkyun Nam Eisai Korea Marketing Team Leader
Yongjun Han Eisai Korea Product Manager
Minjun Choi CoCo Entertainment Performance Director

Why is this work relevant for Branded Content & Entertainment?

As a partner of Korea’s National Institute of Dementia, Eisai wanted to empower families help kids understand and cope with having a family member suffer from dementia. The work involved us creating an Augmented Reality storybook for children which taught them about illness in an engaging and comprehensible way. The AR technology made the characters appear animated when seen through a smartphone, making the story intriguing to young readers who were motivated to read the book again and again. The children engaged their parents to read it with them, generating awareness and healthy conversations about dementia between parent and child.

Describe any restrictions or regulations regarding Healthcare/RX/Pharma communications in your country/region including:

Only healthcare practitioner-targeted marketing activities and unbranded awareness campaigns are allowed. For OTC drugs, all the following not allowed: Any assertion/assurance on efficacy or safety; any recommendation/certification by experts; any statement on recovery/response rate; any comparison with other drugs/medical instruments and safety/comparison with other medical institutions; any consumer reviews.

Describe the target audience and why your work is relevant to them.

Eisai wanted the message of dementia to resonate with a wider and younger audience and become a conversation topic within local households. To this end, we have aimed the campaign at parents with young children, teachers and healthcare providers.

Background

How do you even begin explaining to your child why their grandmother no longer remembers their name? Dementia is an incurable mental condition that is suffered by 749,000 Koreans. That number is expected to rise to over 3 million by 2050. It is emotionally difficult when a loved one is afflicted, and children who witness this suffer the most as parents lack ways to help them understand. As a partner of Korea’s National Institute of Dementia, Eisai wanted to empower families help kids cope, while increasing understanding about the condition so that they can recognize its symptoms and get early treatment.

Describe the creative idea

These insights inspired us to cultivate awareness of dementia from a very young age so that the younger generation of Koreans grow up being aware of the condition, the signs to look for, and how to get help. Our big idea is to let the conversation about dementia be led by the most unlikely of groups: not healthcare providers, not specialists, not key opinion leaders (KOLs), but children. That inspired us to turn to the world of fairy tales. Working with experts in child psychology in partnership with Korea’s National Institute of Dementia, we authored a children’s book entitled “Who Sprinkled Salt on My Cake?” It tells the story of a princess whose encounter with dementia begins when her mother bakes a cake using salt instead of sugar.

Describe the strategy

The strategy was to use engaging storytelling techniques that employed language, themes and imagery that is relatable to young readers, and leads to cross-generational conversations about dementia – a topic that is not typically discussed among family members. Ultimately, the campaign would generate open discussions that involve children, their parents, teachers and healthcare providers.

Describe the execution

With the help of illustrators, animators and technologists we created a magical Augmented Reality storybook that made dementia easy to understand. The AR technology made the characters appear animated when seen through a smartphone, making the story intriguing and exciting to young readers who were motivated to read the book again and again. The children engaged their parents to read it with them, generating awareness and healthy conversations about dementia between parent and child. Copies of the book were distributed to children throughout Korea via 274 childcare institutions and 109 schools and children’s libraries. As part of Korea’s National World Dementia Day events that were held in eight different locations across the country, we set up large-scale models of the book and worked with a renowned theatre company to stage a children’s musical that helped bring the story to life in an entertainingly educational way.

Describe the outcome

Even though media exposure was not a key deliverable, it was widely covered by major print and broadcast channels. The publicity generated huge demand from institutions and schools for the AR book. Within one week, 22,000 books had made their way into Korean households, dementia centres, schools and libraries. An extra 8,000 copies had to be printed in response to high demand, bringing the total of copies in circulation to 30,000 – enough to land it on most bestseller lists if it was for sale! As a result, the campaign had to be extended by 6 months than originally planned. A quote by a parent of two sums up the impact of the campaign: “I did not know how to explain to my daughters about dementia. This AR book really helped me. Now, the whole family openly talks about it. This has never happened before.”