DLKW Lowe Illustrates the Tragedy of Heart Disease

By Patrick Coffee 

London’s DLKW Lowe conveyed the truly devastating effects of heart disease in a new campaign launched today to support the British Heart Foundation.

In the first ad, which manages to be both very somber and very British, the spirit of a young bloke’s dad visits him in class at the moment of his death to convey the bad news and explain the nature of mortality in a terribly morbid way.

Now that you’ve been punched in the gut, here’s an even more visceral piece created by the agency’s in-house studio (which goes by the appropriate name We Make Awesome Sh!t).

Advertisement

That was more than slightly horrific, but as dog owners we were even more affected by this one.

Sadly, we’ve been so thoroughly conditioned to accept human tragedy onscreen that we probably would have been more upset if something had happened to the dog.

The client’s head of marketing told LBBOnline that “we want this campaign to give people an emotional punch,” and we’d call the agency successful in that respect. The work’s main point is that heart disease is not just devastating–it’s largely unpredictable as well.

It also reminds us that we need to watch our “bad cholesterol” levels.

After all those emotional hits, this mini-doc explains in greater detail the benefits of the work done by the client. The little girl at the end is almost too much.

The org has even created a “heart attack simulator” app that sends users an unexpected message about the death of a loved one.

This campaign almost certainly wouldn’t work in the U.S. because it has none of the requisite uplift or snark. Heart disease is horrible in every way, and turning tragedy into an opportunity for smarmy inspirational copywriting is mostly an American thing.

 

Creative Agency: DLKW Lowe

Executive Creative Director: Richard Denney
Digital Developer: Syd Lawernce @ We Make Awesome Sh!t
Designer: Rob Hampson @ We Make Awesome Sh!t
Creative Directors: Sean Bone, Mike Boles & Jerry Hollens
Chief Creative Officer: Dave Henderson
Producer: Trudy Waldron & Vanessa Hunt
Planner: Charlie Snow, James Dawkins
Account Management: Charlie Hurrell, Paul Wilde, Rose Reynolds

Media Agency: PHD

Audio Post Production: Wave

Editors: Art Jones , Isaac Bell and James Bradley
Edit Company: The Works
Post Production House: Electric Theatre

Production Company: Park Pictures, MAKE

Directors: Isaac Bell and Richard Denney

Director: Tom Tagholm

Advertisement