Great Challengers know how to create Symbols of Re-evaluation: ideas that breakthrough the convention and clutter by jolting people out of their usual way of seeing the category – prompting them to re-evaluate their choices within it.

This can be anything from re-framing information in a startling way – as Jamie Oliver did at TED when he showed us that just from drinking one carton of milk a day, in just five years of school, one American child is being fed enough sugar to fill a wheelbarrow (!) – to subtle behaviour changes, like Barclays’ ‘Free The Pen’ idea.

Cutting through the clutter when it comes to selling medicine is much easier said than done. Engaging with specialist prescribers who work in a therapy area day in – day out, and successfully getting them to see the world in a way that they haven’t before, is a rare feat. So intro LEO Pharma and their fantastic effort at a Symbol of Re-Evaluation – EXPOSED.

Its sole ambition was to jolt the community out of their complacent attitudes to psoriasis: getting physicians to really understand the often devastating impact of the disease and recognise that it isn’t ‘just another skin condition’. A 30 minute film about an ordinary (or extra-ordinary depending on how you see it) North London lady, Rena Ramani,  gives us a peek at what it’s really like to live with psoriasis – you’d have to be a pretty tough nut not to be stirred.

In it Rena interviews other psoriasis sufferers – one of whom says “having survived breast cancer, this [psoriasis] was far worst had you compared the two”. She also challenges a specialist to don psoriasis-like make up for the day: getting him to experience the strange glances and unwitting stigma that she confronts every day – prompting him to re-appraise the way he views the disease himself.

LEO Pharma showed this at conferences up and down the UK and in doing so has gone a long way to raising issues frequently overlooked in this therapy area. Apparently it has been so successful that they plan to roll it out globally.

A truly innovative Symbol of Re-evaluation for a very conventional Industry…more of this please.