In AME’s Inside the Win, we explore how bold creativity and smart strategy come together to make award-winning campaigns succeed. Meet the minds behind the work featuring insights from VML Indonesia's Mark Verhagen, Executive Creative Director and Adam Thurland, Chief Strategy Officer.

2025 AME Awards Silver-winning "Tongue Spoon" for CERELAC

In a country where 1 in 3 children experiences iron deficiency, Cerelac and VML Indonesia set out to tackle a critical health issue with an unexpectedly simple piece of innovation: a feeding spoon. The Tongue Spoon was engineered to match the color of a healthy baby’s tongue allowing mothers to spot early signs of iron deficiency during everyday feeding moments. What began as a small design intervention became a breakthrough health-check mechanism, seamlessly integrating early detection into a familiar ritual for millions of families.

Creative Viewpoint with Mark Verhagen, Executive Creative Director

Mark oversees VML Indonesia’s creative output,from TV commercials, human centered design projects, social, digital campaigns and product design. With over 10 years experience in the industry. He worked attop agencies in Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. His journey has resulted thus far into award winning TV commercials, tech-driven experience marketing events, viral billboards,eCommerce platforms, fully integrated campaigns and award-winning social media campaigns. Mark is that modern all-round creative with a broad knowledge of everything related to today’s marketing, while always keeping his strong love and passion for creativity.

AME Awards: “Tongue Spoon” turned a simple household object into a powerful symbol. How did the creative idea first come about?
Mark Verhagen: The idea for “Tongue Spoon” actually started from the product itself. Our baby cereal is high in iron, and in Indonesia, iron deficiency is a big issue among children. But when we dug deeper, we found two key problems: first, most moms weren’t even aware of iron deficiency; and second, it’s difficult to detect because it usually requires invasive tests like a blood sample.
That’s when we discovered something powerful, the tongue can show early signs of iron deficiency. And since the tongue is something a mom naturally sees every time she feeds her baby, we realized we could turn that everyday moment into a meaningful one. That insight became the foundation of the “Tongue Spoon” idea.

AME Awards: Balancing emotional storytelling with a clear health message is challenging. How did you keep the work both creatively inspiring and grounded in its purpose?
Mark Verhagen: With the Tongue Spoon, we had two clear goals: to raise awareness about iron deficiency and to educate moms on how to help prevent it. Once that purpose was set, it guided every creative decision we made.We knew feeding time can already be stressful for moms, so we didn’t want to add fear or pressure. Instead, we chose to tell the story in a gentle, positive way. That’s why everything, from the spoon’s design to the packaging and communication, was made to feel soft, cute, and intuitive. It keeps the message emotional and inspiring, but always grounded in its real health purpose.

AME Awards: How did your team turn an often-overlooked early sign of iron deficiency into something mothers could easily recognize during everyday feeding moments?
Mark Verhagen: One of the early signs of iron deficiency is a change in tongue color. It’s something that’s right there in front of a mother every time she feeds her baby. But the
question was, how would a mom know what a healthy tongue should look like? Without a clear reference, it could easily cause confusion or worry.That’s when we arrived at the simplest and
most intuitive idea: a spoon in the color of a healthy tongue. It gives moms something to compare their baby’s tongue with in a natural, everyday moment. Visually, it’s direct and unmistakable.
Conceptually, it connects the act of feeding with awareness and ties perfectly back to the product and its purpose.

Strategic Perspective with Adam Thurland, Chief Strategy Officer

Adam thrives on untangling messy problems. Starting as a designer before moving into strategy, he spent a decade helping to build one of Shanghai's leading
independent agencies, and now leads multidisciplinary teams at VML Indonesia, across brand planning, CX, and commerce. He's passionate about proving that empathy isn't just good ethics, it's good business, and believes the best ideas happen when you bring brilliant, diverse minds into the same room and ask "what next?"

AME Awards: From a strategy standpoint, what was the key consumer or cultural insight that led to the “Tongue Spoon” idea?
Adam Thurland: We discovered that Indonesian mothers trust what they can see themselves over abstract nutritional information. So we thought: what if we could turn the tongue, an early indicator of iron deficiency, into a simple, everyday health check.

AME Awards: How did your team identify the tongue and feeding moment as a clear signal for early iron deficiency ?
Adam Thurland: It was actually about connecting health awareness to the feeding moment. The tongue serves double duty; it's essential for feeding, but it also disrupts a daily
behaviour, when mothers are focused, to become a visible health indicator. We leveraged this natural connection, transforming a routine feeding session into an opportunity for early detection. The spoon made the invisible problem of iron deficiency instantly visible.

AME Awards: Effectiveness is at the heart of AME. How did you structure the campaign to ensure measurable impact and behavioral change?
Adam Thurland: We built credibility through trusted health professionals, midwives and pediatricians who distributed and explained the spoon. Then amplified through digital
channels for broader reach. E-commerce bundles drove trial, while clear KPIs tracked new buyer behavior and spend. Each channel had a specific role in moving mothers from awareness to action.

AME Awards: What challenges did you face in convincing your client to back such an unconventional idea?
Adam Thurland:Honestly, sometimes ideas need to be felt not just presented. Initial conversations showed interest, but we knew this needed to come alive. So we prototyped the actual spoon with full packaging. The moment the client held it, they got it, instant yes. Sometimes you just have to show, not tell.

AME Awards:  In what ways do you think “Tongue Spoon” demonstrates how effectiveness and empathy can work hand in hand in modern marketing?
Adam Thurland: Empathy drove everything; understanding mothers' limited resources, their trust in visual cues, their reliance on community health workers, and this empathy delivered effectiveness; maintained penetration despite category decline, new buyers spending 50% more per trip. When you genuinely solve people's problems, business growth follows naturally.