American Heart Association: Life is why
The American Heart Association's "big brother knows best" scientific approach to sharing "heart healthy" information for years lacked any emotional resonance with the people they were trying to help. We did research around people's attitudes around heart disease and the AHA and uncovered that most people didn't think in terms of "heart health," they were concerned with health in general. Armed with that insight, we stripped down AHA's message to it's essence: to help people live a healthier, longer life. Then we set out to remind people why living longer for the ones they loved was important to them and all the ways the AHA helped them do that.
Adweek's coverage of the repositioning.
AdAge's coverage of the repositioning.
​
Art Director/Creative Director: Kevyn Faulkenberry
Copywriter: Chris Conte
​
To support the campaign we created a landing page, that instead of dropping them into the cold 1000+ page AHA website of the time, was built around the ideas of the new brand and allowed AHA to connect with visitors. There they could learn about AHA's mission, personalize and share their own why they wanted to live healthy, connect with helpful online tools and more.
NOTE: In the first year, the campaign saw 17.9 million online engagements and compelled 309,000 people to share their ‘why’ on social media.
Digital tools encouraged people to share the reason why they wanted to stay healthy with their family and friends.
The campaign was supported very strongly with digital media targeting women. Here is an example of the rich media ads that ran.
A spread from the American Heart Association "Life is why" brand guidelines.
Some examples of photography from this campaign that I art directed.