Agency/Firm: Area 23, an IPG Health Company

When presented with a problem, Area 23 refuses to limit itself from finding an out-of-the-box solution. The IPG Health agency lives by its “What If” slogan, dismantling creativity barriers that have long hampered the healthcare marketing space.

Working with Hip Hop Public Health, Area 23 educated underprivileged Black communities about the dangers of “food deserts”—areas where the lack of access to healthy food and a lack of nutrition literacy contributes to obesity, diabetes and increased mortality. 

Enter Lil Sugar, an evil sugar cube who disguises himself with the numerous obscure names used by the food industry to hide sugar in packaged goods. Voiced and co-written by Darryl “DMC” McDaniels from Run-DMC, the swaggering cube of sweetener raps about his many personas and how he hides in prepackaged foods. 

Endorsed by the New York City Board of Education, the Lil Sugar campaign became part of the 2022 OPEN National Field Day event across 28 countries and reached more than 800,000 students. 

In a campaign to slow the insidious growth of Alzheimer’s, Area 23 worked with the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA) in Brazil to reimagine reminiscence therapy. Typically a costly way to use written or oral life histories to help those with Alzheimer’s, Area 23 instead launched the bAIgrapher project.

Using generative artificial intelligence, bAIgrapher collects stories from patients and loved ones and creates personalized print or audiobook biographies to help people reconnect with their past. Unlike other generative AI models, bAIgrapher uses only information provided by each user. 

The UFCSPA has made bAIgrpaher part of its treatment protocol and the tool will be extended for use in affiliated medical colleges, including at Harvard and Brown.