2018 Winners & Shortlists

IMMUNITY CHARM

Gold

Case Film

Presentation Image

BrandMINISTRY OF PUBLIC HEALTH, AFGHANISTAN
Product/ServiceTHE IMMUNITY CHARM
EntrantMcCANN INDIA Mumbai, INDIA
CategoryPublic Education & Awareness
Idea Creation McCANN INDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Idea Creation 2 McCANN HEALTH New Delhi, INDIA
Media Placement McCANN HEALTH New Delhi, INDIA
PR McCANN HEALTH New Delhi, INDIA

The Campaign

The immunity charm comprises colored beads, with each bead being code for a specific vaccine. On every vaccine, doctors add the corresponding bead to the bracelet, creating a data bank on the child's wrist. Strong traditional biases and wide spread illiteracy were the main hurdles. The Immunity Charm takes care of both as it is rooted in tradition and requires no reading or writing on the part of the parents. And empowers doctors in Afghanistan with real usable information.

Creative Execution

Doctors and Healthcare professionals were given their own Immunity Charm Kits and required just a one hour training program. With each kit a doctor is equipped to take care of 50 children's Immunization records. The immunity charm comprises colored beads, with each bead being code for a specific vaccine. On every vaccine, doctors add the corresponding bead to the bracelet.

Afghanistan's vaccination completion rate is just 50%, and infant mortality rate is 101 out of every 1000 live births. As the Immunity Charm spreads across various Afghan provinces, it helps thousands of infants complete their vaccination schedule. This is a unique case of collecting data and then using that same data as incentive!

The Immunity Charm is the immunization history of a child, worn by the child. It creates a direct communication between infants' doctors and the parents. Borrowing from an Afghan tradition itself, we modified the evil eye charm, commonly found on an infants wrist, as our medium to spread the message of immunization amongst various Afghan communities. The charm is not merely for the purpose record keeping of vaccines but also reminds parents to follow up on their child's immunization.

The strategy was to incentivize Afghans to maintain data on vaccination. In a society with traditional biases against vaccination, this was no easy task. The Immunity Charm used another Afghan tradition to tackle traditional biases - an evil eye bracelet that is put on Afghan new borns. By codifying the beads on the bracelet, doctors have created an incentive for Afghan mothers to maintain immunization history. On every vaccine given, the doctor adds a specific colored bead to the bracelet, building up the immunization history data on the child's wrist. This data can be easily interpreted by other doctors when they see the bracelet.

Credits

Name Company Role
Prasoon Joshi McCann Worldgroup India Cheif Creative Officer
Prateek Bhardwaj McCann Worldgroup India National Creative Director
Harshit Jain McCann Health Marketing Director (Asia Pacific)
Soumya Shiva Nagabhushan McCann Worldgroup India Creative Director
Vaibhava Bhatnagar McCann Worldgroup India Creative Team Leader
Kamya Elawadhi McCann Health Account Director
Urvashi Das McCann Worldgroup India Creative Resource
Dan Carucci McCann Global Health Senior Technical Advisor