Private healthcare provider Bupa is using braille and audio as it encourages people to look beyond the typical portrayal of health, in its position as the official healthcare partner for ParalympicsGB.
Part of the wider ‘This Is Health’ initiative, created for Bupa by MullenLowe Group, the campaign has launched with an immersive takeover of St. Pancras International’s Underground tunnel, timed to coincide with the start of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
Created by experience agency Momentum Worldwide, the immersive takeover uses print, audio and braille elements to ensure the ads are as inclusive as possible. Spatial audio narration directs people to braille on the underside of the tunnel’s central handrails, giving a digestible overview of the ‘Health is’ campaign.
The immersive OOH stars Paralympians Emmanuel Oyinbo-Coker and Hannah Cockroft OBE, with relatable images and video reflecting their everyday lives as Bupa aims to promote a broader, inclusive view of health, challenging perceptions of what a healthy person looks like.
All text used on the ads themselves is also set in an accessible typeface, chosen following several rounds of legibility testing to ensure as many people as possible could access the messaging.
Bupa also sought to ensure the audio narrations translated the story in a way that was as inclusive as possible. They were delivered by Samuel Parish, a voice artist who has high-functioning autism.
“The campaign aims to showcase different perspectives on health,” said Bupa director of brand marketing Angelique Walker.
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“To ensure we were able to truly reflect what life is like with a disability we worked with photographer Sonny McCartney, an amputee, to capture those everyday moments, as well as accessibility marketing specialists.
“We hope the resulting campaign is a positive step forwards in representation of health in a more inclusive way.”
Moving images and edge-to-edge mirrors have also been included to encourage commuters to see themselves in the story, reinforcing that ‘Health is as unique as you are’.
The campaign was developed following research showing that more than two in every five people (42%) believe there’s a ‘one size fits all’ approach to how health is portrayed. The impact of this is most felt by disabled people, with more than one in 10 disabled people (11%) say they’ve never seen an advert featuring someone like them.
Bupa’s ‘Health is’ campaign will feature across a nationwide out of home media plan, for the duration of the Paralympic Games, which run to 8 September.
