Awareness campaign that makes itching easier to talk about

An Apple A Day developed a campaign that makes itching, a common but under-addressed symptom, easier to talk about, encouraging patients to bring it up with their healthcare provider.

The challenge

Some symptoms get little attention, even though they significantly affect quality of life. Itching is one of them. Patients often don't report it, because they don't connect it to their condition or assume there's nothing to be done about it anyway. And what isn't raised can't be treated. The challenge was to take itching out of the taboo zone and make patients aware that it's worth talking about.

The approach

The core was an accessible campaign idea that makes an uncomfortable topic approachable: talk about it. An invitation to take itching seriously and raise it with a healthcare provider, in plain language, close to the patient.

From that idea, we developed a broad package of content. A dedicated website brought everything together as a central place for information and recognition. Advertorials and brochures extended the reach. A newsletter kept the audience engaged. For authoritative backing, we interviewed a KOL, whose story fed into, among other things, a mini-magazine that covered the topic in depth while keeping it accessible. And with practical tools, such as an itch diary in which patients could track their symptoms, people got something concrete in hand to open the conversation in the consultation room.

That way, the campaign moved from awareness to action: from recognizing the symptom, through authoritative information, to a concrete tool that got the conversation with the healthcare provider going.

The result

A campaign that made itching, an under-addressed symptom, easier to talk about and gave patients a reason to raise it. By combining information, recognition, and practical tools, the topic got a tangible place, both at home for the patient and in the conversation with the healthcare provider.