Next time a project hits a setback, think of Eversana Intouch’s Cannes gold lion winning campaign. The New York agency pivoted around a stumbling block that threatened to sink its campaign—and turned the hitch into a strength that bolstered its core message about the inequality of breast cancer care.
Eversana won the lion for its work with The Chrysalis Initiative. Intouch began doing pro bono work for the organization in 2021, shortly before its acquisition by Eversana, and, after running an initial campaign, had a clear vision for how to spread their message about the inequities in breast cancer. The problem? Hospitals didn’t share that vision, as Susan Perlbachs, chief creative officer at Eversana Intouch, explained.
“We wanted to take this into hospitals and do installations within the actual physical institutions, so that we had healthcare workers getting this message and interacting with it on their way to work. When we went in and started talking to the hospitals, we found they were not open to this and actually turned us down, which we were honestly a bit surprised by,” Perlbachs said.
The setback was a key moment for the campaign. Initially, the team panicked, fearing that “this might be the end of the project,” Nicholas Capanear, executive craft director at Eversana Intouch, said, but within 30 minutes it rallied. Quickly, the team realized the rejections “kind of proved the fact that a lot of hospitals don't want to confront the issue of systemic racism in the healthcare system,” Perlbachs said.
Pushed on by the refusal of Jamil Rivers, the founder of The Chrysalis Initiative, to take no for an answer, Eversana identified a way to get the message to healthcare professionals at their target hospitals. Unable to put materials inside hospitals, Eversana bought media placements at all the bus shelters surrounding the sites to confront healthcare professionals with the message on their daily commutes.
The campaign features topless Black cancer survivors with the inequality sign painted over their breasts. Eversana wanted the posters to be sparse and focused on the impactful images but also needed a way to communicate statistics in a similarly powerful manner to show the disparities of breast cancer care. Augmented reality technology offered Eversana a way to get people to engage with statistics.
“It’s triggered through Instagram. You use the QR code, it pops up Instagram and the unequal sign shows up directly over the poster. Then, the experience happens on the screen and you can click through it and see the statistics,” Capanear said.
The statistics, sourced from organizations such as the American Cancer Society, show that Black women are 42% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women, are six times more likely to develop metastatic breast cancer and are three times as likely to experience discrimination during treatment. The campaign also featured testimony from Black women about their experience accessing cancer care.
After seeing the stats, readers were offered the chance to sign up for unconscious bias training. Eversana has evidence the campaign worked. More than 2,100 doctors interacted with the campaign, and 27 hospitals are now implementing unconscious bias training. Perlbachs said “a number of institutions” signed up after the “Inequality You Can’t Ignore” campaign, and individuals expressed interest, too.