Delegates at ECCO - Gastroenterologists. Conference audience.

The only restriction was to keep the posters unbranded as this was a medical education symposium

What's that? You need to get people to a symposium on oral iron at a conference about Crohn's and Colitis (ECCO in Barcelona, Feb 2015)? And it’s at 7:15 am? On the Saturday morning after the Friday night gala bash? Good luck with that!

We needed to do something disruptive. Something that cut through the noise. Everyone else was going left. We needed to go right.

Which is why we challenged peoples’ preconceptions with the most boring work you’ve ever seen.

This poster is one of a series of materials that were displayed around ECCO, resulting in the symposium being talked about more and over 100 delegates attending.

Not bad for a boring symposium in the graveyard slot.

The goal was to get as many delegates to show up as possible. We knew that creating a normal poster campaign wouldn't get noticed. So we had to be disruptive. The target audience was Gastroenterologists and the posters were dotted about the congress at the designated areas including a leaflet insert in a welcome bag.

There was a very little budget for these materials so a strong idea was essential. The strength of the creativity lies in the strong use of language, an under used weapon in the modern adman's armoury. They were provocative headlines, using irony and self deprecation to create standout. We also used the 'graveyard' time slot as a bonus, to further play on the idea of looks can be deceiving. Most posters for symposiums feature a silhouette of the city's skyline and the names of the speakers. We took it a little further.

Shield wanted to get noticed, it worked. People at the congress were talking about the posters and the symposium. But to get over a hundred attendees at 7.15 am in the morning was deemed a huge success.

This was a direct promotional campaign in that within a very short time period (3 days) we had to get noticed and we would be judged on the number of delegates who attended the symposium.

The symposium's title was LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING - not all oral irons are the same. So we decided that to demonstrate that title we should create posters that were also deceptive. We made the posters appear to be the dullest posters of all time, however with the use of an asterisk linked to the symposium title we reinforced the idea that that looks can be deceiving.

Shield Therapeutics were holding a symposium at ECCO 2015 (European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation) The aim was to lay the groundwork for a product launch in 2016. The problem was Shield is a relatively new company and unheard of. The time slot they were given was 7.15am on the Saturday morning, which was the morning after the Gala dinner and party. There is no point in hosting a symposium if nobody shows up. They needed bums on seats but the congress only allowed certain standard materials to be included, posters and bag drops.