The Clog

Imagine walking through your city on a regular day when suddenly, giant yellow balls — human-sized — block your way. They stop you in your tracks. They bring your routine to a halt. They clog your life.

That’s exactly what happened with The Clog, the impactful awareness campaign by Daiichi Sankyo, designed to show what cholesterol is doing inside our arteries. And they brought that message straight to the arteries of some of Europe’s major cities.

The Clog has shown that we can communicate a health issue to people effectively, simply, and with a touch of humor.

César Pérez

Creative Director at VML THE COCKTAIL

The challenge was to communicate a problem, the clogging of our arteries by cholesterol, which seems to be familiar to everyone but no one takes seriously. And that's because we're unaware of how this problem disrupts our entire lives. To achieve this, it was essential to explain it and attract media attention.

In Europe, it is estimated that 20% to 40% of adults are at high or very high cardiovascular risk. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the region, accounting for over 3.9 million deaths annually. Cholesterol is one of the primary contributors. Yet, society remains largely unaware of the dangers posed by clogged arteries caused by high cholesterol levels. We wanted to demonstrate how high cholesterol levels can lead to heart failure by clogging the arteries.

To illustrate this, we brought cholesterol to the streets — right into the heart of various European cities — clogging their main arteries. We narrowed the alleys, interrupted traffic, and symbolically blocked city life using 10 people inside large balls representing cholesterol.

The campaign achieved exponential growth in the laboratory's image among healthcare professionals, who, as a result, saw Daiichi Sankyo as a key player in the treatment of atherosclerotic vascular disease. This campaign continues to be replicated today in different European cities more than a year after the first Clog, and it has been used at universities such as the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid as an example of good practice in street campaigns.