AI Based OOH Campaign Fights Dramatic Rise in Mental Health Issues

Croatia Insurance, Bruketa&Zinic&Grey and Go2Digital created the AI Anxiety Metre – digital city light measuring anxiety levels of passers-by. The AI Anxiety Metre campaign aimed to highlight dangers of long-term emotional stress and consequences of not taking care of mental health, especially as past three years have been some of the most stressful for Croatians. The country was struck by earthquakes and it ranked 8th in the world in covid-19 deaths per capita. Furthermore, the recent conflict in Ukraine felt too close for a nation that endured some of the most gruesome wars in recent history. All this resulted in an alarming rise in mental health issues. 

How anxious are Croats? 

In the first year of the pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety increased by 25%, according to  

WHO. Research on mental health in Croatia during the pandemic and after the earthquake shows that the population has become more anxious than before these events and worse off than other Europeans. It showed that 50% of Croatian population had noticeable levels of anxiety and 20% deal with strong or extremely strong anxiety, yet the topic is mostly ignored. 

Increased levels of anxiety contribute to the development of mental health issues and chronic illnesses that consequently lead to a shorter life span which, for Croats, is already shorter than the European average.  

That's why Croatia Insurance emphasised the importance of mental health, offering free preventive check-ups and encouraging users to take care of their health by contracting Health Insurance. 

Anxiety Metre is an AI-based city light with built-in cameras and mood recognition software's 

Croatia Insurance and Bruketa&Zinic&Grey agency wanted to correlate the emotional state of Croatians with the level of health risk they were facing and offer them a personalised solution, in real-time. 

They partnered up with Go2Digital and created Ai Anxiety Metre. They used cameras in existing digital DOOH locations and paired them with the use of AI-based mood recognition algorithms that were able to perform facial coding and measure anxiety levels of passers-by.  

Google face mesh and automatic facial emotion recognition (FER) technology along with other algorithms analysed facial muscles using machine learning to identify a combination of eight emotions defined as anxiousness. 

As passers-by would walk past, the screen invited them to participate. The users would stand in front of the screen, give their consent by waiting five seconds for the application to screen their face and show them their level of concern which would be automatically measured and displayed. Depending on the result, a dynamic personalised message would have been displayed.  

Those with the highest levels were directed to a free preventive check-up, while those with lower levels received messaging around the importance of Health Insurance. 

They showed that an encounter with an ad could help you live a healthier life. Instead of people watching commercials, commercials now watched them back, for a greater good – their mental health. 

“As far as we know this was the first ever DOOH campaign that focused on measuring anxiety, the hardest emotional state to detect. We developed a system that could identify anxiety and measure it in live video, becoming the first brand in the world to run a real-time programmatic campaign based on anxiety.” 

Campaign rolled out in three stages 

First, they ran a network test of the algorithm, selecting locations with high pedestrian traffic, and with the highest levels of detected anxiety among those pedestrians. 

Second, their test flight ran across 14 screens in the Croatian capital Zagreb, to prove that the personalised real-time ads would result in an increase in website traffic and preventive check-up bookings in the Croatia Insurance Polyclinic. 

Third, while TV, digital and OOH ran nationwide, they expanded the reach of the DOOH campaign to cover the three largest cities in Croatia.  

People queued to measure their anxiety levels. 1/3 of all passers-by interacted with the ad, meaning 8% of the Croatian urban population measured their anxiety level in two flights of the activation.  

The average interaction with the ad was measured at 18.8”, which exceeded the average dwell time around a DOOH ad by 817%. 

Even though the campaign is over, the AI Anxiety Metre will continue to live in the Croatia Insurance mobile app – freely available to everyone who needs it.