| Title | HAPPY PLACE |
| Brand | APOTEK HJÄRTAT |
| Product/Service | PAIN KILLERS |
| Category |
C09. Use of Technology |
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Entrant
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WENDERFALCK Stockholm, SWEDEN
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Idea Creation
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WENDERFALCK Stockholm, SWEDEN
|
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PR
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WENDERFALCK Stockholm, SWEDEN
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Production
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WENDERFALCK Stockholm, SWEDEN
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Credits
| Petter Rudwall |
Wenderfalck |
Creative Director |
| Anna Hoffman |
Wenderfalck |
PR Manager |
| Emma Nilsson |
Wenderfalck |
PR Director |
| Greta Rönnskog |
Wenderfalck |
Art Director |
| Axel Barvaeus |
Wenderfalck |
Planner |
| William Hamilton |
Vobling |
Production Designer |
The Campaign
To create the world's first VR-app, Happy Place, that helps people reduce their pain – available for free to the public. This would give people a substitute for pain killers and create an incentive for people to decrease their use of it.
Execution
The VR app Happy Place was released on Oculus Store, free of charge, and activated on a broad level. A broad media pitch was conducted to reach the target audience and to raise awareness around the question, and to get people to try the experience themselves, instead of taking pain killers. Simultaneously, a case video explaining the idea was released on YouTube and communicated in social media towards the target audience, to raise awareness. The VR app was implemented in selected pharmacy stores, for people to try themselves, even if they didn’t own a VR headset, which drove a lot of people to the stores. We also created tailored media pitches targeted niche medias, which created a buzz in medical- and pharmaceutical medias. This generated massive attention in medical field and Happy Place was recommended from a lot of people.
Happy Place became a huge success both in Sweden and internationally. Happy Place created a major buzz internationally when major news sites around the world covered the story - resulting in a reach of 100 million impressions. On the target market, Sweden, over 3 million Swedes were reached through a wide spread of articles in Sweden’s largest newspapers, tech magazines and health media. Happy Place has been downloaded from Oculus Store over 16 000 times, with a growing rate of 2 400 downloads a month. The average time spent in the app is 9 minutes, with a total of 2 100 hours spent in Happy Place. Happy Place is now, almost 1 year after launch, the most populaire app in the relaxation category on Oculus Store. This really highlight the power of Virtual Reality and how technology is able to fundamentally enhance people's lives.
The Situation
Because we managed to change peoples perception and behaviour around a very serious question, overconsumption of pain killers, with the power of PR.
The Strategy
How you perceive and deal with pain is largely a mental thing. Years of research and several independent studies show that virtual distraction can shift the brain’s focus from physical discomfort. VR has that ability on peoples mind, the tech is now so powerful that you can trick the brain into focusing on other things, which makes the human brain focus less on the perceived pain. We collaborated with a psychologist with great expertise in the VR field and conducted research to find the right level of distraction to base the UI/UX on. The designer and psychologist worked closely together to create the immersive world and to assure that the VR-app would have clinical effect on the human brain. The UI/UX design, sound design, grading of the app etc., was all based on our extensive research.