Haleon

Working across Haleon's consumer healthcare portfolio gave me the opportunity to lead creative development across some of South Africa's most recognisable healthcare brands. As Lead Copywriter, I worked primarily on Grand-Pa, alongside Med-Lemon and a national Sensodyne pitch, helping shape campaigns from initial strategy through to execution. Each brand presented a completely different creative challenge, but all required the same careful balance between commercial creativity, scientific accuracy, and the realities of communicating within a highly regulated healthcare environment.

One of the things I enjoy most about healthcare marketing is that great work has to earn every word. Creativity can't rely on exaggeration or empty promises; it has to be grounded in evidence, regulation, and genuine human insight. My role extended far beyond writing headlines or executing campaigns. I led ideation from the earliest stages of strategy, developed campaign platforms, wrote copy across every channel, presented concepts directly to clients, and worked closely with strategists, designers, and account teams to ensure every execution was both creatively compelling and medically responsible.

The majority of my work centred around Grand-Pa, one of South Africa's most iconic pain relief brands. Unlike many brands, Grand-Pa didn't need introducing. It had already earned the trust of generations of South Africans. Our challenge was to ensure it remained culturally relevant while preserving the familiarity and credibility that had made it a household name. Every campaign had to reinforce that trust while demonstrating that the brand continued to evolve alongside its consumers.

My work with Grand-Pa started with a Heritage Month campaign centred around a partnership with the Soweto Towers. Rather than approaching Heritage Month as another promotional moment on the calendar, we recognised an opportunity to celebrate something much more meaningful. The campaign honoured South Africa's resilience, diversity, and shared identity, connecting one of the country's most recognisable landmarks with one of its most recognisable healthcare brands. It challenged the perception that healthcare advertising must always be functional by showing that trusted brands can play an authentic role in broader cultural conversations when rooted in genuine insight.

Alongside this, I led the creative development of Grand-Pa's refreshed packaging launch. Rebranding a product with decades of consumer trust is never simply a design exercise. People often notice change before they notice reassurance, so our task was to communicate that while the packaging had evolved, everything they relied on remained exactly the same. This simple but powerful truth became the foundation of an integrated campaign that rolled out across paid social, digital commerce, retail media, print, point of sale, and in-store communications. As Lead Copywriter, I was responsible for developing the central creative platform and overseeing the messaging across every touchpoint to ensure complete consistency throughout the campaign.

One of the projects I'm most proud of was leading the ideation and scripting for Grand-Pa's 'Power in the Push' EBI campaign. Rather than focusing solely on pain relief, I wanted to tell a story about what happens after the pain subsides. Built around the idea of Contagious Optimism, the campaign followed a chain of seemingly ordinary South Africans whose small acts of kindness ripple through an entire community. Grand-Pa became the enabler rather than the hero, empowering people to push through everyday pain so they could continue showing up for those around them. I developed the central creative platform, wrote the long-form film, TVC and digital cutdowns, and built the campaign ecosystem across social, retail, radio, and out-of-home. The result was an integrated platform that shifted the conversation from treating pain to enabling possibility, demonstrating how an everyday healthcare brand could tell a deeply human story without ever losing sight of the product truth. As this work was developed during my final months at Ogilvy, the campaigns are still making their way to market.

Alongside this, I also led the creative development of a national Sensodyne pitch. Tooth sensitivity is often communicated through product features and scientific claims, but behind every clinical benefit sits a very human experience. Our challenge was to translate robust oral health science into an emotionally engaging creative platform that remained scientifically credible while standing apart from competitors. From developing the strategic territory to crafting the campaign concept and presenting the work directly to the client, the pitch demonstrated the balance between evidence-based communication and emotionally resonant storytelling that sits at the heart of successful healthcare marketing.

Looking back, what stands out most isn't any single campaign, but the breadth of the work itself. Across Grand-Pa and Sensodyne, I was trusted to lead ideas from a blank page through to client presentation and final execution. Whether developing integrated campaigns, retail activations, digital content, print advertising, or new business pitches, my responsibility was always the same: find the human story within the science, build an idea worth remembering, and execute it with the strategic rigour that healthcare communication demands.

Working on Haleon's portfolio strengthened far more than my writing. It developed my strategic thinking, sharpened my ability to move between brands with completely different personalities, and reinforced the importance of balancing creativity with responsibility. It reminded me that the most effective healthcare marketing doesn't simply explain products. It earns trust, creates relevance, and finds meaningful ways for brands to become part of people's everyday lives.