Bupa Challenges Perceptions with Immersive Experience to Highlight Partnership with ParalympicsGB
Ahead of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, leading healthcare provider Bupa is encouraging the nation to look beyond the typical portrayal of health, as part of Bupa’s role as the Official Healthcare Partner for ParalympicsGB.
‘Health Is’, by Bupa is part of their wider ‘This Is Health’ campaign. It launches with an accessibly immersive takeover of St. Pancras International’s Underground tunnel, featuring the Para athlete Emmanuel Oyinbo-Coker and Paralympic Champion Hannah Cockroft OBE, highlighting the lack of diverse perspectives when it comes to showcasing what ‘health’ looks like.
The campaign draws insights from consumer research which shows that although the vast majority of people believe health is unique to everyone, 42% believe there’s a “one size fits all” approach to how health is portrayed in society that neglects diverse body types and abilities.
The impact of this is most felt by disabled people, with two in five (40%) saying they wish there was wider representation of body types and abilities in society and 20% even saying that this affects their mental health. Compounding this issue, more than one in 10 disabled people (11%) say they’ve never seen an advert featuring someone like them. The immersive experience features Emmanuel Oyinbo-Coker and Hannah Cockroft OBE, not as competitors or disabled people, but through their personalities, passions, and relationships, through a series of images and video shot to reflect their everyday lives.
By showcasing Oyinbo-Coker and Cockroft in relatable, everyday scenarios Bupa aim to promote a broader, inclusive view of health and challenge perceptions of what health is. In-depth interviews ensured these scenarios are authentic, inspiring headlines like ‘Health is as unique as you are’ and ‘Health is turning setbacks into comebacks’ feature in the tunnel. Additional moving images on D6 screens and edge-to-edge mirrors have been placed in the final frames to encourage commuters to see themselves in the story, reinforcing the message that 'Health is as unique as you are.’
Angelique Waker, director of brand marketing at Bupa Global, India & UK said, “The campaign aims to showcase different perspectives on health. 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.”
Making accessibility the priority
Understanding the challenges faced by disabled people is at the heart of this campaign. This is one of the first campaigns that offer inclusivity on multiple levels. The type is set in an accessible typeface, and several rounds of legibility testing were held to make sure as many people as possible could take in the campaign messaging. In the tunnel, the campaign story is told across three accessible media: print, braille, and audio. Braille features on the underside of the middle handrails and gives a digestible overview of ‘Health is’.
Spatial audio narrations direct people to the braille handrails. But rather than simply describing what people may not be able to see, Bupa sought to translate the story in a way that feels inclusive to multiple communities. Narrated by Samuel Parish, a voice artist who has high-functioning autism. Through this campaign, he hopes that other people will understand different points of view from they're perspective.
And whilst Paris 2024 is tipped to be the most watched Paralympic games ever, Bupa’s ambition is to ensure it is the most relatable games too.
Bupa’s ‘Health is’ campaign will feature across a nationwide out of home media plan, live from 26th August through to 8th September.
