A day after being crowned the Healthcare Agency of the Year, Medulla Communications' Amit and Praful Akali took stage at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, to talk about integrating medicine with creativity. The session, as one would expect, began with a round of applause for the duo.
Amit, chief creative officer of the agency, started off by dedicating the big wins of the night before to Indian creatives and a 'Jai Hind' chant. The presentation provided insights on the work that won them the title.
Praful underlined the importance of the process of collaboration between creative and planning, and the role of the specialists in medicine in healthcare communications.
He explained ,"A typical agency structure sees a creative team and a planning team. It's difficult to say what comes form where. It's the process of them coming together that is important. We have set up a medical process than can take care of the insight, to idea, to execution. They make the creative product more creative. A lot of agencies have medical teams, but they probably only validate the creative."
Amit added, "So you've suddenly got this third rung. They get into doctors' hearts and patients' heads and things like that. Our teams work together."
The duo then went ahead to showcase some case studies from India in the healthcare category.
ADHD
Praful Akali said, "It was a creative idea that couldn't happen without the help of the medical team. It was great integration."
The Blue Dot
The duo then showcased McCann Erickson's Blue Dot. Amit claimed this was a piece of work that Medulla was jealous of. Praful explained that this was a case where the medical service actually became the solution.
IAPC
Instead of taking the audience through the case study, the duo opted to play the film 'Last Words'.
Amit said, "It was something personal and it's something close to our heart. We lost our mom to Cancer 10 years ago. She told us she didn't want to go to hospital and instead enjoy (her last days) with the family. We went for holidays etc. together. We then took her to the hospital. We didn't get to spend enough time with her in her last days. So when Palliative Care came to us, it was natural for us to do this."
Praful added, "This is a film that still gives me goose bumps. The medical team explained that when doctors send patients to the ICU it's for the better, but they're actually sending them away from their loved ones."
Indian Red Cross - Blood Banking
Amit explained, "This is done by a mainline creative agency which doesn't have a healthcare specialist team. So we asked them for the process and it was almost the same. They had a medical expert from the outside helping them just like we had a medical team within."
House for Worms
Praful said, "This also couldn't happen without the presence of the medical team."
In this case, the specialist team validated the shape of the intestine at each step.
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