Haleon creates AI-powered tool to make advertising more inclusive for consumers

Haleon, a global leader in consumer health, has developed a pioneering AI-powered tool aimed at improving inclusivity and representation across its digital advertising content. With 83% of global advertisements failing to meet basic accessibility standards¹, and 54% of consumers saying they don’t feel culturally represented in online advertising², this tool is a positive step forward in addressing this inclusivity gap.

Haleon’s Health Inclusivity Screener is the only data driven tool of its kind to analyse digital advertising content for both readability and inclusivity metrics. The tool assesses creative content against the following criteria:

• Health Literacy: Message simplicity and comprehension – how easy it is for consumers to understand and interpret Haleon’s healthcare messaging.
• Accessibility: Text legibility, text captions, and sound – how accessible Haleon’s advertising is for people who have visual or hearing impairments.
• Representation: Demographics of sex, age range, skin tone and situational settings – to allow Haleon to understand whether its casting choices are representative of all consumers.

Haleon will use the new tool to enhance its digital advertising through greater accessibility, simpler messaging and content which better represents the diverse range of consumers it serves globally. It will drive improved brand performance and ROI through campaigns which resonate more strongly with consumers, including those who are more vulnerable to exclusion – while supporting Haleon’s ambition to achieve greater health inclusivity for all.

Working with its Panadol pain relief brand, Haleon has successfully piloted the tool in nine markets. These are: Australia, Colombia, Egypt, Malaysia, Saudia Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, UAE and UK³. The company intends to extend the tool to other markets and global brands over time, allowing it to deliver more inclusive advertising at scale.

Tamara Rogers, Chief Marketing Officer, Haleon, said: “While many brands have taken positive steps in inclusive advertising, we see a huge opportunity for Haleon to set the standard in the consumer health sector. We’ve already taken action to improve the accessibility of all our marketing assets, but we know that we can go further. Message comprehension has a key role to play in improving the performance of our campaigns and building greater health literacy, helping people take better care of their everyday health. This tool is truly unique in measuring this alongside other inclusivity metrics, allowing us to enhance our advertising to make sure it’s seen, heard, and understood by all consumers.”

Haleon has developed the proprietary tool in-house in partnership with CreativeX, a technology company that helps brands power their creative decisions with data. By using AI and machinelearning, CreativeX can extract creative data from individual assets, assessing the age, gender, skintone, and situation of individual characters. This data is combined with an AI application and analysed to provide data on message comprehension. All components are combined to create a user-friendly health inclusivity performance dashboard.

Anastasia Leng, Founder and CEO, CreativeX, said: “The launch of Haleon’s Health Inclusivity Screener sets a new standard for how brands can systematically improve inclusivity in their creative work through always-on measurement. This ushers in a new era for creative data, demonstrating its ability to help brands not only lift the floor of creative quality but raise the ceiling to creative excellence. Thank you to Haleon for being brave and curious enough to continuously push the boundaries of how data can enhance creative execution and effectiveness.”

Media Contacts:

Gemma Thomas: [email protected]; +44 (0) 7721376006

Laura Hoy: [email protected]; +44 (0) 7554351990

Notes to Editors:

• When analysing more than 1500 Panadol digital assets across all nine markets included in the pilot, Haleon’s Health Inclusivity Screener found that their content scored highly for gender balance and accessibility features like sound and text captions. The tool was also able to identify potential improvements across inclusivity metrics, such as using a broader range of skin tones and simpler messaging to boost comprehension.
• These learnings are being shared across Haleon’s global marketing function, allowing Haleon to set inclusivity commitments that will raise the standards of its digital advertising across its global portfolio of brands, including Sensodyne, Centrum, Voltaren and Otrivin.
• The Health Inclusivity Screener is perfectly aligned with Panadol’s brand ethos and its commitment to bringing gentle and effective pain relief to everyone. By ensuring that Panadol’s digital content is accessible and representative of the diverse range of consumers it serves, the tool will help the brand to enhance the overall accessibility and inclusivity of its content.
• In addition to supporting the company’s health inclusivity ambitions, the findings from the tool will help Haleon to improve advertising performance and ROI. This is supported by recent research which found that Haleon advertisements which feature diverse casting are 58% more likely to be perceived by consumers as being different from other ads.⁴ Digital advertisements with a simple written message are 1.2x more likely to be spontaneously recalled by consumers, while digital ads featuring voiceover content equivalent to a reading age of nine or less are 1.6x more likely to be spontaneously recalled. Additionally, including text captions improved the likelihood of watching the ad completely by 1.2x, while brand differentiation and purchase intent improved by 2.3x and 1.2x respectively.⁵

About Haleon:
Haleon (LSE / NYSE: HLN) is a global leader in consumer health, with a purpose to deliver better everyday health with humanity. Haleon’s product portfolio spans five major categories - Oral Health, Pain Relief, Respiratory Health, Digestive Health and Other, and Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements (VMS). Its long-standing brands - such as Advil, Sensodyne, Panadol, Voltaren, Theraflu, Otrivin, Polident, parodontax and Centrum - are built on trusted science, innovation and deep human understanding.

For more information, please visit www.haleon.com