Breathless.
Creative Strategist
Client: AstraZeneca
Driving global action to tackle severe asthma by turning parliaments into movie theatres.
Trailer: Full film below
AstraZeneca wanted to transform understanding of severe asthma and drive behaviour change amongst HCPs and policymakers.
The challenge.
Recognition of severe asthma is low: Often patients don’t receive the specialist care they require, and policymakers view asthma as long ‘sorted’. We needed to disrupt this paradigm and shine a light of the severity of the disease to motivate policymakers into pragmatic action.
The creative solution.
We commissioned award-winning documentary maker Michelle Coomber to create a powerful and emotive disruptive short film – BREATHLESS – to mark World Asthma Day 2019. Screened in parliaments around the world and seeded to policymakers through social targeting.
Breathless: The Story of Life With Severe Asthma
BREATHLESS tells the story of three severe asthma patients in three countries – each with starkly different experiences of the complex systems governing care. A dedicated website and short-form BREATHLESS content (including a call to action film, social media teasers and a trailer) was released to mark World Asthma Day 2019.
This powerful and highly ambitious content disrupted the traditional public policy recipe of report, roundtable and press release – providing the severe asthma community with a platform to engage directly with the often hard-to-reach audience of respiratory health policymakers and policy influencers.
Reach & Engagement
Viewed by 2.5m+, including 400+ policymakers from 8 countries
56k visits to microsite, 900+ actions
Spain – Shown to 100 clinicians, policymakers and politicians.
UK - Shown in Parliament at APPG event attended by patients, PAGs and politicians and screened at Clinical Pharmacy Congress (2,000+ attendees).
Canada - Screened to launch Canadian Severe Asthma Patient Charter - 16 MPPs in attendance, including Health Minister
Germany – screening for World Asthma Day with 250 policymakers
Impact
Global - early successes include German reforms, published Quality Standard in UK and change to the Japanese Disease Countermeasures Act
UK - All-party parliamentary group launched inquiry at parliamentary event following the BREATHLESS screening
Canada & USA - states committed to producing tailored Severe Asthma Quality Standards and launched campaigns highlighting problem of overprescribing of oral corticosteroids
Awards
Communique 2019 - Finalist: Excellence in Engagement Through Digital Channels
PR Week 2020 - Highly Commended: Best Use of Content in Health & Pharma Campaign
Client: AstraZeneca
Agency: ENGINE MHP
Production Company: ENGINE Film
Director: Michelle Coomber
Executive Producer: Adam Booth
Producer: Laura James
Creative Strategist: Leo Birch
Chief Content Officer: Dave Roberts