One Minute Brief of the Day: Create an ad to raise awareness of type 2 diabetes
Today’s brief is being run
in collaboration with Ryan Wallman (a.k.a. @dr_draper) – who is Head of Copy at
Wellmark, a healthcare communications agency – and Advertising Health, an online hub for the healthcare advertising
industry.
Brief
Campaign to raise awareness of Type 2 Diabetes & prompt people who may be at risk to ask their doctor for a diabetes test.
Entries
For regulatory reasons, please ensure that you do not include the names of any prescription-only products in your ads.
Please include @wellmark_health and @adhealthmag in your tweets.
Winners
The best entries from this brief will be featured on the Advertising Health website and the Wellmark blog.
The overall winner will also receive Dave Trott’s ‘Predatory Thinking’ book as a prize.
Background: about type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is the most
common form of diabetes. It impairs the way the body uses glucose (sugar),
which results in a build-up of sugar in the blood.
Type 2 diabetes is caused
by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Although there is a strong
genetic predisposition, the risk of type 2 diabetes is greatly increased by
lifestyle factors such as obesity, lack of physical activity, and poor diet.
Many people first diagnosed
with Type 2 diabetes are unaware that they are even at risk, and most of them
are only diagnosed ‘by accident’ (i.e. as part of routine tests or while they
are being treated for other conditions).
The problem with this is
that organ damage can occur before any symptoms are noticed, so delayed
diagnosis of type 2 diabetes puts people at risk of serious complications, such
as kidney disease, eye disease (including blindness), heart disease, stroke, and
disease of the peripheral blood vessels (which can lead to amputation). About
half of the people with type 2 diabetes have some evidence of complications at
the time of their diagnosis.
For these reasons, type 2
diabetes is sometimes called ‘the silent killer’.