Socks On Fear Off – Biomedical Engineering student wins Omnicom Health Group Brand Challenge 2025

In early April, second-year Biomedical Engineering student Annus Khan and his multi-disciplinary UCL team participated in and won the Omnicom Health Group Brand Challenge with their #SocksOnFearOff public health campaign, which aimed to reduce fear and promote participation in cervical screening among young people.

Congratulations to Annus and his team for this achievement and for producing a highly creative and clever concept!

Written by Annus Khan, Biomedical Engineering undergraduate student: 

I took part in the Omnicom Health Group Brand Challenge 2025, which had been running in the US for 3 years and was launched in the UK for the first time, and it consisted of designing a full public health campaign for a real-world brief. The challenge this year was to increase cervical screening attendance among 25–49-year-olds — a group where 1 in 3 people choose not to attend their screening, often due to embarrassment, fear, or stigma. Our team from UCL, consisting of students from various backgrounds including Engineering, Medical Sciences and Psychology, faced off against Lancaster University, Goldsmiths University, and Manchester Metropolitan University.

The campaign we produced, #SocksOnFearOff, was built around tackling those emotional barriers in a creative way. The idea is simple: socks are the one piece of clothing you're allowed to keep on during the procedure, and we turned them into a symbol of comfort and confidence. We designed four fun sock options — including one with a cervix on it — and paired it with a TV advert concept, posters, billboards, and social media content encouraging people to “pull up their socks” and book their screening. 

The campaign uses humour and warmth to break down the awkwardness that often stops people from going, and it’s built to be inclusive — for anyone with a cervix, across different backgrounds. After presenting our campaign to the agency, I am proud to say that we achieved first place, with positive feedback to the point that the judges mentioned that they want to already bring it to life!

Beyond the campaign itself, taking part in this challenge led to something even bigger: as a result of the win, all members on the UCL team who are still studying next year secured a spot on Omnicom’s summer internship programme, and the graduating students from our team were offered places on the 6-month industrial placements. Seeing the impact a student-led campaign could make, from a simple advert on a university careers newsletter, was a massive eye-opener.

I got involved in the initiative after discovering this opportunity through UCL Careers and took it on because I care about how health campaigns reach real people. I worked on the barriers to screening, helping shape the tone of the campaign, and also helped design the call to action, which mapped out how someone could go from seeing an ad on social media to actually booking their appointment.

We designed something that could genuinely shift how people feel about cervical screening. It wasn’t about making the test itself easier — it was about making the experience feel less isolating, less awkward, and way more human. Seeing how much that resonated reminded me how creative thinking can actually lead to behaviour change.