Eileen Matthews

Creative Director & Copywriter

Haleon + MICROSOFT | Access Codes

D&AD

Experiential: Wood Pencil

Commerce: Shortlist

CANNES

Innovation: Shortlist

Mobile: Shortlist

Hundreds of millions of people living with visual impairments don’t have equal access to vital information and warnings found on healthcare product packaging.

So, how do you change the packaging for every Haleon* product to be accessible for the visually impaired? You don’t. That would take years. Instead, we hacked the functionality of the one thing already printed on every pack: barcodes.

We turned every Haleon barcode into an Access Code: the world’s first barcodes that speak information from labels aloud.

*Haleon is the consumer healthcare arm of GSK that houses brands like Advil, Sensodyne, Centrum and Voltaren.

Access Codes in action

If you’re curious to know more, here’s a quick demo of how Access Codes work.

always read the label AD CAMPAIGN

We introduced Access Codes to our target audience with an audio-first campaign—crafting an original song that charmingly explains how Access Codes work. And we partnered with a legally blind director to help us create the visual expression of that song for the rest of the sighted world to enjoy—a music video featuring a group of Haleon products coming to life to sing and dance in a bathroom.