Teva’s goal of treating the individual—we wanted to bring out a
connection with real, individual
patients. And that brought us to
the idea of roles. Cancer patients
aren’t just patients, they are fathers
and mothers, daughters and sons,
sisters and brothers—real people
with real names and families and
others who care for them. So the
question became how do we draw
out and emphasize those personal
roles in the context of oncology?
The answer, it turned out, had
been staring us in the face all
along. During one of our discussions, complete with all those
long oncology terms, someone in
the room noticed that the word
mother could be found inside
chemotherapy. And that became
the foundational idea behind our
campaign—finding the individual
inside the verbiage of cancer and
cancer treatment. So we set a team
of copywriters to work finding
names and roles within the language of oncology.
What I particularly enjoyed about
this was that it became a pure
thought exercise in language and
creative copywriting. Many mar-
keters, especially in healthcare,
tend to think in terms of images
first, which isn’t necessarily wrong
because images can be far more
engaging than words. Images can
also be easier to get past regulatory
review than words. But marketers
can never forget how important
language is, which was brought
home to us as we turned our
minds to the words of oncology
and found all sorts of other words
and names inside them. That of-
fered Teva a way to communicate
that its interest in cancer patients
goes beyond their disease, embrac-
ing the things in their lives that
truly define them, such as their
roles as mothers, pops, sisters and
sons. It was—it is—a powerful and
arresting statement.
But of course the words alone
weren’t enough. We needed to find
a way to place all this in a visual
context that would complement
and support it. Most importantly,
we didn’t want the backgrounds
or the colors or the photography
to get in the way of those wonderful headlines. We started out with
black and white photographs, but
wanted something unique, something that would suggest people
who might be going through
chemotherapy or rebounding
on the way back from aggressive
cancer treatment. So that’s why we
used soft color pushes in the final
campaign images, to suggest that
the individuals are returning to
full vibrancy. And once the words
and images came together, we
knew it was right. We sent several
ideas to Teva, but as soon as they
saw this one they said, “This is it.
It’s perfect.”
SYNERON CANDELA
ULTRASHAPE BODY
CONTOURING
UltraShape is a technology that
uses ultrasound energy to non-
invasively destroy fat cells in the
body. When we first started work-
ing with the brand, our basic goal
was to communicate how easy it
is to get a flat stomach by using
UltraShape to get rid of stubborn
belly fat. But as our account plan-
ners dug deeper into consumer in-
sights, we realized there was more
to it than just “easy.” People were
willing to work for their dream
bodies, in fact many were already
killing themselves in the gym. But
no matter how many crunches
they did, they still couldn’t shed
those last few pounds. Simply
looking at a magazine rack can
illustrate this point: six-pack abs
galore, workout routines, diets, 10
steps to a flat tummy. It’s never-
ending because no one is achiev-
ing it and most of these regimens
require a fair amount of commit-
ment, some barely distinguishable
from torture. Whereas UltraShape
was easy—lay back, relax, do abso-
lutely nothing for an hour, and let
the doc melt your belly fat.
For something like this, comparisons can be a particularly powerful
communication tool.
Our first idea was a straight comparison—on one side, three visuals
of the “fitness pub” path to a flat
stomach (crunches mostly), and
on the other side, three visuals—
before, during, and after—of the
UltraShape process. The trouble
was that it was too busy to be arresting. It was clever and could
get a smile out of the viewer, if the
viewer took the time to look at the
whole thing. So we needed to find
a way for it to be more visually
engaging, more quickly.
Then came the idea of creating
two separate ads, one a crunch
demonstration and one for UltraShape, with the character from
the first actually leaving her ad
to go look at the UltraShape ad.
This, we thought, was both clever
and arresting, but it was still a
