When a Video Game Becomes a Health Tool: Samsung and Cheil’s Cognitive Innovation

At Cannes Lions 2025, Cheil Spain and Samsung picked up a Silver Lion in Health & Wellness for ‘The Mind Guardian’ – a deceptively simple video game with the power to identify early signs of cognitive decline.

Designed for tablets and using AI to assess memory through everyday gameplay, the project exemplifies something bigger than a single tech-for-good activation. It represents a shift in how consumer brands are stepping into the health space – not through awareness ads, but through practical tools.

“We are trying to demonstrate regular brands not related with pharma or wellness can create amazing things,” says Alejandro Di Trolio, European creative chairman and executive creative director at Cheil Spain. “More general brands are entering into the health and wellness space to demonstrate that creativity can work there.”

For Samsung Spain and Cheil, it’s not a new impulse. Over the past decade, the partnership has quietly built a portfolio of purpose-led tools – like ‘Dytective’, which screens children for dyslexia in minutes, or ‘TALLK’, which enables people with ALS to communicate via eye tracking – that make real-world impact. ‘The Mind Guardian’ is the latest proof that technology, creativity and inclusive design can converge to fill critical healthcare gaps. Not as charity. Not as comms. But as scalable, socially minded product design.

Too often, health campaigns focus on awareness alone. ‘The Mind Guardian’ doesn’t. Instead, it offers something rare: a practical, widely accessible tool that can support early detection of Alzheimer’s. Built for Android tablets, the game leads players through a first-person cityscape, recreating daily tasks while analysing decisions using AI. In under 45 minutes, users receive a personalised memory assessment with 97% accuracy – data that can help initiate earlier intervention, long before a clinical diagnosis.

This active intervention approach builds on Samsung Spain’s long-standing philosophy of ‘Technology with Purpose’. With The Mind Guardian, the ambition is broader still. “We escaped from the niche,” says Alejandro, noting that this tool can change anyone’s life. “Everybody can get in a vulnerable situation with Alzheimer’s.”

At the heart of Cheil Spain and Samsung’s innovation philosophy is what Alejandro calls the “inclusive algorithm”. It’s more than a creative approach – it’s a mantra that guides how each new idea takes shape. “When we start creating new projects, we always say: OK, the gadget that we have is going to exist, and we're going to continue producing that,” he explains. “But if we reuse all the gadgets and products that we have launched… we're going to transform this algorithm that is used for communication or entertainment to do something.”

Rather than chasing the latest hardware trend, the idea is to unlock new utility from existing consumer tech – from smartphones and tablets to wearables and smart home devices. It’s about using what’s already in people’s hands to deliver value in unexpected, socially relevant ways.

“In general, nothing is built in Europe. But we can build algorithms and use all the gadgets and devices that exist. I think the scalability is even bigger than producing a gadget. We can create with these algorithms – something new, every year, every month. And the developers are not expensive,” says Alejandro. “Everybody is totally crazy, trying to avoid AI or seeing it as an enemy. I think that we have demonstrated, five years in a row [his time at Cheil Spain], that with AI, you can transform the reality of people – but also business.”

This principle of creative reuse defines ‘The Mind Guardian’ as much as it did earlier projects like ‘Dytective’ or ‘TALLK’. While the product interfaces may vary, the operating system underneath is the same: taking the logic and power of mass-market technology and repurposing it for scalable, inclusive outcomes. In Alejandro’s terms, it’s a “different level of connection with brands and people.”

Designing The Mind Guardian wasn’t just a technical challenge – it was a generational one. While many health-related apps target caregivers or specialists, this project needed to speak directly to people in their late 50s and early 60s, who are at risk of developing Alzheimer’s. “We had to step back a little bit,” says Alejandro, working on a product for gen x. “We had to change everything.” The Cheil Spain team created focus groups with people in that age range, to understand what level of gaming-savviness the audience would have. “They come from the arcade era,” says Alejandro. “But they are still using games. In Spain for example, 62% of the ‘silver generation’ are using tablets for gaming – Candy Crush, strategy games too. This game is trying to break the perception that gen x is totally old-fashioned and that they don’t want to connect with new technology. It’s not true.”

By designing with this existing behaviour in mind, The Mind Guardian avoids condescension and instead meets its audience where they already are: informed, curious, and more tech-savvy than the industry often assumes.

For Alejandro, the case for brand responsibility isn’t idealistic – it’s urgent. “Right now, I’m thinking that politicians are totally crazy. The world is fighting in wars – over and over, war every day,” he says. “So I think that somebody in marketing has the opportunity to make a change – a little change. This is a beginning for people in marketing to awaken and put money into the ‘inclusive algorithm’.”

That belief sets The Mind Guardian apart from fleeting purpose-led campaigns. It’s not a one-off, feel-good activation – it’s the result of years of creative and technical investment, building on Samsung Spain’s long-term philosophy of ‘Technology with Purpose’. As Alfonso Fernandez, the brand’s chief marketing officer, put it: “It’s not doing things for altruism. It’s doing things that will affect the business positively, but at the same time, are doing good for society.”

That consistency is what Malcolm Poynton, Cheil’s former global chief creative officer, credits with the platform’s credibility. “Technology with Purpose is not a marketing phrase – it’s an absolute belief.” A decade of projects demonstrate a rare kind of commitment: not just to using creativity for societal benefit, but to doing so repeatedly, quietly, and with proof. ‘The Mind Guardian’ is simply the latest evidence of that responsibility in action.

That shift in mindset reframes marketing budgets as tools for public good, not just brand exposure. It challenges other businesses – especially those with scale, data and reach – to ask how they might repurpose existing platforms to solve real-world problems. Whether it’s health, accessibility or education, the tools already exist. What’s needed is the will to use them differently.

Samsung Spain’s legacy with Cheil proves it’s possible. From the first dyslexia screeners to ‘The Mind Guardian’, the agency’s work offers a repeatable blueprint: grounded in tech, designed with empathy, and built to last.

As the creative industry looks ahead, it’s time to widen the definition of success – not just the campaigns that win awards, but the ones that quietly stay in people’s lives and make them better.