HealthCut

Cultural context
Tick-borne diseases are issue in Slovakia. Due to climate change in recent years, we are breaking records in cases of Encephalitis and Lyme borreliosis. Ticks are widespread in our country with several outbreak locations. Public Health authority regularly calls for prevention in the forms of repellants, wearing long clothes and vaccinations.

Invention of the new prevention
According to data, ticks attack men more often than women. The places on the body where the tick attaches itself include the hair and the area behind the ears. If the tick does attach itself, and you spot and remove it until 24 hours, the chances of getting sick are low. That‘s why a local barbershop Harold’s pointed out a new type of prevention that everyone had overlooked.

Idea
We launched a special hair cut with shortened hair behind ears, so men can spot ticks much sooner, remove it more quickly and prevent diseases.

How it worked
Through various public activities around the summer, we raised awareness of this new form of prevention.

We teamed up with Bratislava Public Services and mowed the high grass in the city parks with a mower in the shape of a hair trimmer.

That’s because grass and hair have a lot in common. Both can protect you from ticks if they are short. Mowed grass in parks became an outdoor invitation to Harold‘s barbershop.
On Google Search, HealthCut already popped up when someone searched for ticks prevention suggestions.
To protect hikers, we opened the first pop-up barbershop directly next to the hiking trail.


Results
During campaign, Harold’s customer base has almost doubled (+39,8 % increase in regular customers)

HealthCut caught the attention of people and media and quickly became a popular service provided by the barbershop. Local barbershop reached more than 500 000 Slovaks. They now understand that cutting hair short is a new prevention of tick-borne diseases.