Similac campaign

Campaign ideas, art direction & design

Background

Cow's milk allergy is one of the most common food allergies in infancy, and one of the most commonly missed. The symptoms are real but rarely dramatic. A unsettled baby. Persistent eczema. Reflux that doesn't quite respond the way it should. Loose stools that get attributed to something else. For parents, it is exhausting and confusing. For clinicians, it can look like almost anything.

That gap between symptom and diagnosis has consequences. Every week a CMA goes unidentified is another week of unnecessary discomfort, disrupted feeding, and growing parental anxiety. And the longer it goes unaddressed, the harder it becomes for families to trust that anyone has the answer.

Similac exists to close that gap — with a formula designed specifically for infants with CMA, built on evidence, and trusted by specialists. But before the solution could land, the problem needed to be felt.

Solution

An unbranded awareness campaign. Three months. Across Europe. Aimed at the doctors and nutritionists who see these babies first, and who hold the power to shorten the diagnostic journey significantly.

The campaign's role was deliberate and precise: not to sell, but to sensitise. To bring CMA back to the front of clinical minds. To sharpen pattern recognition. To remind HCPs that the unsettled, uncomfortable infant in front of them might not need more time, they might just need the right question asked sooner.

This was the springboard. The campaign that created the conditions for the conversation that followed. Awareness first, so that when the branded message arrived, it landed somewhere already prepared to receive it.