Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards - 2024

Campaign: Magnetic Stories
Agency/Firm: Area 23, an IPG Health Company
Client: Siemens Healthineers

“Magnetic Stories,” the campaign that transformed loud and scary MRI sounds into delightful audiobooks, helping ease the stress of child cancer patients undergoing these scans, is an impactful initiative with a true purpose.

That’s why the campaign, from MRI manufacturer Siemens Healthineers, in partnership with IPG Health agency Area 23 and publishing house LeYa, was named the 2024 Purpose-Led Campaign of the Year, gold, in the suppliers/vendors/pharmaceutical companies category.

MRIs can produce audio data as loud as military jets, according to Siemens Healthineers, which is an intimidating experience for adults, let alone children already under stress from undergoing cancer treatment.

Before this revolutionary initiative, children would sometimes have to be put under anesthesia just to get them through the scan, which is troubling, especially for kids who must get MRIs as routinely as every two months. The process was not only hard on the patients but the medical staff, as well.

“Magnetic Stories” not only helped child patients undergo MRIs with less anxiety, but it also provided an experience that kids want to return to, according to Siemens Healthineers. The stories are now available outside hospitals, at LeYa’s online store on e-commerce retailer Kobo, evidence that they are “just good stories that kids love,” the company wrote in its submission.

After launching within Portugal’s CUF hospital network, Siemens Healthineers plans next to expand the initiative to Spain.