01 / DIABETES AUSTRALIANational Diabetes Week 2026
Living Out Loud
Creative Strategy · Creative Direction · Copywriting
The brief
Diabetes Australia needed a National Diabetes Week campaign that would cut through the noise of traditional health awareness. Not another campaign that talked about people with diabetes. One that finally talked with them and gave them the platform to speak for themselves.
The challenge was significant. With 2+ million Australians living with diabetes across multiple types, each with distinct causes, challenges and stigmas, the campaign needed to unify without homogenising. It needed to feel personal at scale. And it needed to move people from awareness to action with measurable outcomes tied to three of Diabetes Australia's most important organisational priorities: growing the Blue Circle Collective advocacy network, driving Diabetes YOUnited membership, and creating Australia's most powerful contribution to the International Diabetes Federation Western Pacific Region Congress in Melbourne.
The strategy
The insight was simple but powerful: the diabetes community already knew what needed to be said. They had been saying it for years to their families, their doctors, their friends. What they had never had was a national platform to say it to the country.
The strategic idea became the campaign mechanic: complete the sentence "I wish people knew…" and share your declaration publicly. It was never a hashtag challenge or a petition. It was a genuine act of voice that was specific, personal and impossible to dismiss.
The theme Stronger Together anchored the strategy. Rather than unifying different types of diabetes under one story, the campaign celebrated their differences. Every declaration was shared with the person's type of diabetes clearly visible, making the diversity of the community the campaign's greatest strength. Many distinct voices, speaking at once, becoming a chorus no one could ignore.
The campaign was structured across three audiences, each with a distinct role. Diabetes YOUnited members were activated a week early, seeding the declaration wall and building social proof before the first billboard appeared. Blue Circle Collective Ambassadors, Advocates and Advisers led publicly with their own declarations on OOH and across social media. The general public was invited to listen, and then to help turn up the volume, sharing declarations on behalf of people they love, bringing them into the community as allies rather than observers.
The campaign was also designed with legacy in mind. Every declaration, every act of participation and every moment of community connection was engineered to feed Diabetes Australia's three growth priorities and leave something behind long after National Diabetes Week ended. The natural arc of the campaign started with declaring during NDW and then was presented to the world at the IDF Congress, which gave it a built-in second act that extended its impact far beyond a single week.
Structurally, the campaign was only possible together. A single declaration is a story. Many declarations are a movement. The declaration wall only has power because the community fills it.
Stronger Together was not just the theme — it was the strategy.
The creative
The team: Brooke Krumbeck (Creative Lead) & Arnold Espinola (Designer)
The campaign was built around one provocative, open-ended line:
"I wish people knew…"
From that single prompt, everything followed. The visual identity centred on the declaration itself that was bold, personal and unapologetic. The creative system was designed to flex across every format: billboard, social tile, EDM, toolkit asset and press, while keeping the individual voice at the centre of every execution.
Blue Circle Collective Ambassadors Lachlan Kennedy, Lara McSpadden and Warren Bingham led the campaign with their own declarations, each tied to their personal story and their type of diabetes. Their wishes anchored the out-of-home campaign and media strategy, while the broader community was invited to add their voices through a free Canva template and online submission form.
The copy strategy was built on three principles: specificity over generalisation, humanity over statistics, and invitation over instruction. Every piece of copy, from billboards to landing pages to paid media, was written to make the reader feel that their voice was the point, not a by-product.
The audience expansion was also a creative decision. By inviting health professionals, researchers, clinicians and allied organisations to add their own declarations alongside those living with diabetes, the campaign created a cross-sector chorus. When organisations outside the diabetes community, including the neuroendocrine cancer community, participated organically, it proved the platform had resonated beyond anything the brief anticipated.
Living Out Loud was not just a digital campaign.
It reached Australians in their cities, on their drive to work and through their radios.
The results
The numbers behind Living Out Loud tell a story of a community that was ready to be heard. Over 700+ wishes were submitted during National Diabetes Week across social media and the online form. National media coverage spanned 7News, 9News Melbourne, The West Australian and the Gippsland Times, with radio appearances reaching listeners on FiveAA, Wave FM Wollongong and Nova 106.9 Brisbane. Out-of-home placements carried the campaign across Australia's streets and highways.
Perhaps most powerfully, the campaign drew in communities well beyond diabetes, including the neuroendocrine cancer community, who recognised their own story in the platform and added their voices without being asked. That kind of organic participation is not something you can manufacture. It is what happens when a campaign is built on genuine truth.
Selected wishes were taken to the IDF Western Pacific Region Congress in Melbourne, shared on a global stage and incorporated into the Diabetes Australia Congress stand design, making the community's voices a literal, visible part of Australia's international diabetes presence.
The Blue Circle Collective received 402 applications following the campaign, representing a significant surge in people ready to turn their declaration into lasting advocacy.
Diabetes YOUnited memberships continued to grow significantly during the campaign period, reflecting the power of giving a community a reason to show up and stay connected.
Real change doesn’t come from one voice speaking louder, it comes from many voices speaking together.
Why it mattered
This campaign was built on a belief that the most powerful thing a not-for-profit can do is get out of the way and let the community speak. Living Out Loud was not a traditional awareness campaign. It was a platform and the diabetes community showed up to use it in ways that went beyond anything a brief could have anticipated.
Wishes that began as personal declarations became acts of advocacy. A community that is too often spoken about finally had the space to speak for itself; to the public, to health professionals, to the medical industry, to researchers and to government. The chorus was unmissable. The calls for change were clear. The results spoke: 402 new advocates, half a million Diabetes YOUnited members and a declaration wall presented to the world on a global stage.
For me personally, this campaign carried extra weight. As someone living with a chronic illness, I know what it is to feel dismissed, minimised and misunderstood by a system that does not always listen. I brought that understanding to every brief, every piece of copy and every strategic decision. I wanted this community to have what I had spent years wishing for: to be heard, completely and without having to justify themselves.
I believe they were.
Creative Strategy · Creative Direction · Copywriting
Diabetes Australia — National Diabetes Week 2026