Turkcell Healthmetre
Turkcell
Issue 36 | September 2015
Agency
R/GA London
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director James Temple Group Creative Director Ilia Uvarov Design Director Elliot Wright Experience Design Director Stuart Tayler Senior Experience Designer Vincent Steurs Experience Designer Gonzalo Fiorina Senior Visual Designer Ignacio Fretes Visual Designer Parul Arora Associate Experience Designers Mitya Katkin Ilya Torgovnikov
Production Team
Senior Producer Ian Nutt Producer Leen Verburgh
Date
May 2015
Background
Diabetes was a global epidemic. In Turkey it affected one in seven adults and contributed to one in three deaths. More young people were receiving diagnoses every day. Many became depressed and skipped their treatment routine.
Turkcell, the country's leading mobile operator and technology innovator with 36 million subscribers, was well positioned to work with the Ministry of Health to roll out a solution to such a mass audience.
The goals were to increase awareness of the condition among the general population as well as to help actual patients with treatment compliance and motivation.
Idea
Targeting a mainly younger demographic, the solution was comprised of a wireless blood meter that connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone and automatically logged readings to the app. The app mapped the blood level readings to images from Instagram, creating an immediate visual diary for the condition. It was also able to publish the images with overlaid blood measurements to social channels with ease.
Results
The app was tested in a year-and-a-half long trial with 200 patients at Istanbul University. The results have exceeded expectations. Treatment compliance increased by 54%. Blood sugar levels decreased by 27%. Complication forecasts decreased by 37%.
Our Thoughts
Bob Greenberg, Chairman of R/GA has made the point that Blockbuster didn’t see the future coming until Netflix had made them obsolete. His agency was Agency of the Year at Cannes this summer and largely because of the number of Innovation Lions they won. They have moved beyond innovation to invention and this adaptation of mobile technology to meet a pressing need is a terrific example of that. Is this the way forward? For some agencies, why not? Creativity is the ability to solve problems and sometimes that is through communications. In this instance, it’s through a new service that positions Turkcell as being caring and sharing more meaningfully than a 60-second corporate commercial could.