New Zealand's prescription for change

Created in collaboration with McCann, Supernormal’s Reagen Butler directs a powerful PSA highlighting the thousands of New Zealanders who cannot access life-changing medicines that are routinely funded elsewhere in the world. 

Backed by a coalition of 17 patient organisations, the campaign began with an immersive installation at Auckland’s Shed 10, where hundreds of medicines were displayed behind locked doors, each representing a real illness, a real patient community and a real story.  

The 90-second hero film, titled Forbidden Pharmacy, carries that message forward, built around interviews with real patients that were filmed, edited and then built into the installation itself. 

Butler said: “Making this type of work is, to me right now at this point in my career, the thing I care the most about. I knew it would have a level of intensity and weight to it, but I don’t think any of us really understood how giving all of our participants would be. All of them are in really tricky situations they have very little ability to do anything about, but they had such a resolution and a power to them that inspired me to bring a certain level of care to the work.”