2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Declining health outcomes, the rise of preventable diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and ever increasing levels of inactivity encouraged OSN, MENA’s leading Pay TV network to take ownership of their region’s health challenge. A premium entertainment organisation servicing Middle Eastern and African audiences, OSN decided to launch a multi-faceted corporate social responsibility campaign, starting with their own resource; their internal staff. The belief, by changing its internal approach it would deliver an impact for the community. So change from within was paramount and the campaign was devised to firstly impact in-house staff and then filter down to the masses - members of the general public and naturally OSN’s millions of television and online viewers. There was no commercial objective. Altruistically, we preferred to aim to improve the lives of our staff through small health changes, via education, by empowerment and through encouragement. This belief led to the development of the internal PR campaign titled ‘Live More’. At OSN, ‘Live More’ saw staff being trained about achievable and realistic health amendments that would positively impact the lives of themselves and their families. We employed a myriad of complementary tactics that included, but were not limited to, displaying informative posters around communal office spaces, creating more opportunities for incidental exercise and offering unprocessed snacks in-office. As a direct result, more than 50% of staff reported adopting healthier lifestyle changes in and outside of their work at OSN immediately following the campaign launch.

The Brief

The goal: healthier, happier, energized employees! OSN aimed to improve health and wellbeing awareness while encouraging positive change through education within our workforce. We wanted to better the lives of our staff and wanted the secondary mass media campaign to positively impact the health and wellbeing of the general public within the MENA region where diabetes has a significant impact. In fact, six of the top 10 world countries with the highest of incidence of diabetes are in the Middle East. There was no commercial gain from this objective and we targeted more OSN staff directly involved with our business.

Results

The campaign was not a gimmick. We were and we will remain sincere in wanting our people to feel better and be healthier. Staff responded positively and felt genuinely empowered to make small changes to their lifestyles. Tellingly, this non-commercial initiative saw more than 50% of staff adopting healthier habits during the life of the campaign. This included increased physical activity levels and / or making more informed food choices. As a long term program, ‘Live More’ lives on in and outside of the OSN offices in the broader community. We will continue to invest in and grow the program with the aim of releasing further data as this becomes available over time.

Execution

To translate a communications campaign into tangible action, we utilised various tactics to ensure staff felt encouraged to make necessary health adjustments. We didn’t want to pressure the change, nor use shame to promote new behaviours. The big moment was doing free health checks where 44 out of the 104 OSN employees were found to have high blood pressure, and 54% were overweight! The movement took place in offices across the region by closing elevators to support taking the stairs as a form of incidental exercise. In addition chocolates were substituted by fruits, considering they are too high in sugar and saturated fat. We negotiated partnerships with local gyms in return for cost effective staff work-outs, and we displayed informative posters around communal spaces. Educational healthy lifestyles materials were produced, and ‘Live More’ screen savers were designed to flash up on computers across offices at random intervals throughout the campaign.

The Situation

A survey of 900 people living in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region revealed that health was their top priority. Despite the result, MENA health outcomes were declining. Our community was gaining weight and becoming sicker, and it was happening quickly. At OSN we felt we owed our staff the opportunity to help them improve their health and in turn their overall wellbeing. We devised the ‘Live More’ campaign to focus on small lifestyle changes staff could make today that would improve their health tomorrow.

The Strategy

Some people believe it takes 21 days to form a new habit, but nobody definitively knows how to encourage initial behavioural changes that later form healthy habits. To encourage our staff to actively live a healthier lifestyle, and not just learn about living more healthily through “Live More”, we had to make them feel empowered. Leveraging the declining health statistics of the region, we encouraged staff to take ownership over their health and start making realistic adjustments to improve their overall wellbeing. With the office acting as an incubator for the “Live More” message, we capitalised on the physical office space, prominently displaying, discussing, integrating and sharing our health and wellbeing messages with our people. We required OSN employees to not just walk the walk, but also talk the talk and act as OSN’s own health ambassadors within their families and wider community.