the thought:
Millions of pilgrims get sick every year at Hajj. That wasn’t really a brief. It was just a fact I couldn’t stop thinking about.

The problem was, almost every obvious way of helping was off the table. Pilgrims can’t bring phones or personal items into Mecca. There’s no place for branded products or traditional media. What they do have with them are the white clothes they wear and the prayer beads in their hands.

So that’s where the idea came from.

We turned the prayer beads themselves into sanitising beads, helping protect pilgrims as they prayed. No phone. No app. No ad asking anyone to change their behaviour. Just something familiar, doing a little more.

my role:
Creative Director. I came up with the idea and led it from first thought to finished campaign, working across prototyping and production, packaging, launch, media, storytelling and distribution.