A life-saving charm

In the first of a four-part series on award winners at Cannes Ad Fest 2017, we look at McCann Worldgroup India’s ‘Immunity Charm’ campaign that set the stage for India’s stellar performance

It is not without reason that McCann Worldgroup India’s ‘Immunity Charm’ was the most awarded campaign from India at the Cannes Ad Fest 2017. At the heart of this campaign, which took home four gold, six silver and two bronze Lions besides a Grand Prix for Good, was a simple idea: Using tradition to resolve the country’s festering problem of high infant mortality. By using a charm bracelet that is slipped on to children’s wrists to ward off the evil eye, the campaign created an effective and compelling symbol, while making it easier for mothers and doctors to chart a child’s vaccination history.

Afghanistan has amongst the world’s worst infant mortality rates with 115 children dying for every 1,000 live births. Compare this with countries in the neighbourhood and the numbers look even worse. India, a country that has struggled with high infant mortality rates records 41 for every 1,000 live births, Pakistan, 66. In countries in the subcontinent, the problem of infant mortality is tied to a host of cultural, environmental and infrastructural issues that are unique to the region. It was the ability to bring the shared regional experience to the campaign that helped create an effective message.

Launched in April this year, the ‘Immunity Charm’ programme is being tested across Afghanistan. Its promise, said experts, lied in how simple solutions constructed within the confines of traditional belief systems could help tackle a human development issue.

The government in Afghanistan has been acutely aware of the problem for a while and has been pushing vaccination drives aggressively at the village-level to bring down the rates of infant mortality. But local health care providers have struggled to implement it owing to high levels of illiteracy, inherent biases and traditional beliefs that clash with modern medicine. The vaccination completion rate in Afghanistan is estimated to be merely 50 per cent, which means that half the population of children is exposed to life-threatening diseases.

McCann Worldgroup, which worked with the Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistan, to help promote the cause of vaccination, came up with an interesting solution: Using traditional charm bracelets, generally black in colour, to remind mothers to get their children vaccinated.

Mothers were provided with special colour-coded charm bracelets with each bead standing in for the vaccines their children had taken. Every time the child would receive a new vaccine, a new bead would be added to his or her charm bracelet, boosting morale of the parent and goading her to continue with the vaccination programme.

“When an idea is seeded in culture and finds a meaningful role in people’s life, it always has a positive impact, improving salience. This idea did exactly that,” Prasoon Joshi, chairman McCann Asia Pacific & chief executive officer and chief creative officer, McCann India, said.

Even health care providers were excited about the idea, said Joshi, since most of them realised it would be easier reaching out to women. Explaining the importance of vaccination was far easier and mothers no longer had to keep the customary vaccination cards and other paraphernalia, which many barely understood.

Doctors and nurses at the same time were able to get information of a child’s vaccination history by merely looking at the immunity charms without having to refer to medical records, which was timeconsuming and did not exist in many cases.

“I’m really excited about the Immunity Charm, because it turns culture into incentive, and a bracelet into long lines of mothers and children at vaccine clinics,” Peter Singer, chairman, United Nations Innovation, said. The United Nations Foundation, for the record, was involved in the judging of the Grand Prix for Good at the Lions Health Awards, Cannes. This is a special award that considers gold-winning entries ineligible for a Grand Prix in their respective sections at the Lions Health Awards.

“When an idea is seeded in culture and finds a meaningful role in people’s life, it always has a positive impact”