Profmed Takes a Narrative Leap With #TheSpaceBetween
Profmed's #TheSpaceBetween is a single-asset film campaign created by Johannesburg agency Faith and Fear and published in South Africa in February 2019, designed to reposition the medical scheme away from conventional product-led communication toward a purpose-driven narrative centred on professional identity and the psychological space between ambition and wellbeing.
Profmed is a medical scheme built specifically for graduates and professionals in South Africa, according to Iabsa. That focused mandate shapes every aspect of the brand's communication challenge: its audience is educated, aspirational, and resistant to generic insurance messaging, according to Adsoftheworld. #TheSpaceBetween addresses that challenge directly, using the grammar of cinematic storytelling rather than the conventions of healthcare advertising to articulate what it means to protect the life a professional is building, according to Profmed Co Za. The campaign carries a clear thesis — that the space between where a person is and where they are going is precisely where healthcare becomes meaningful.
Published in February 2019, the campaign entered a South African advertising market that, according to Statista, recorded total advertising revenue of R30.35 billion that year, representing a year-on-year increase of approximately 2.8 percent. Within that environment, the shift toward purpose-led brand film was accelerating, and Profmed's decision to invest in a narrative film format rather than a product-comparison execution reflects a deliberate repositioning effort. The campaign comprises a single film asset, a formal constraint that concentrates creative and media weight into one uninterrupted storytelling moment rather than dispersing it across a fragmented content suite.
Profmed operates in one of the most consolidated private healthcare markets in the world. South Africa's open medical-scheme sector held approximately 2.38 million beneficiaries at the end of 2019, according to data cited by Moneyweb. Discovery Health Medical Scheme commanded approximately 56.0 percent of open-scheme membership in that year, according to the same source, making it the dominant force against which every smaller scheme must define itself. Bonitas held approximately 14.6 percent market share, while Momentum Medical Scheme accounted for approximately 6.1 percent, with Bestmed at approximately 4.0 percent. Collectively, those four schemes controlled approximately 80.7 percent of the open-scheme market, leaving Profmed to compete in a highly contested remainder.
Profmed's strategic response to that competitive reality is segmentation by profession rather than price or network. Where Discovery Health competes on scale and breadth, and Bonitas competes on accessibility, Profmed's positioning is exclusivity of relevance: the scheme exists for graduates and professionals, and #TheSpaceBetween is the creative expression of that positioning. The campaign does not argue that Profmed offers better benefits on a feature-by-feature basis. It argues that Profmed understands the particular texture of a professional life — the pressure, the deferred gratification, the identity stakes — in a way that a mass-market scheme cannot. That is a defensible strategic territory, and the film format is the appropriate vehicle for communicating it, because emotional resonance rather than rational comparison is the mechanism through which professional identity claims are made and received.
Faith and Fear constructs #TheSpaceBetween around a narrative architecture rather than a product demonstration. The campaign's single film asset uses the titular concept — the space between — as both a structural metaphor and a visual grammar, framing the moments of transition, doubt, and forward motion that define professional life in South Africa as the precise territory that Profmed is built to protect.
The creative approach reflects a broader strategic shift that Faith and Fear articulated for Profmed in 2019: moving from conventional medical-aid product communication toward human, purpose-led positioning, as documented in Clapboard's campaign archive. That shift demands a different register of filmmaking — one that prioritises performance, pacing, and emotional specificity over information delivery. The film's single-asset format reinforces this intention. By committing the entire campaign to one piece of film rather than a campaign suite, Faith and Fear signals confidence in the narrative's ability to carry the full weight of the brand's repositioning.
Production credits for #TheSpaceBetween include Taryn Sharman and Perri King, whose involvement is documented in the Ads of the World archive listing for the campaign. Their roles position the work within a tradition of South African healthcare advertising that increasingly draws on documentary and drama conventions to create credibility with professional audiences. The film's investment in craft — in the quality of its visual language and its willingness to sit with ambiguity rather than resolve into a tagline — distinguishes it from the category norm of reassurance-led medical aid advertising that dominates the South African market.
No verified performance data for #TheSpaceBetween is publicly available. No trade press coverage of the campaign was found across Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, and no social media reaction data from the period of its February 2019 release has been documented in available sources, including Ads of the World and Clapboard's own archive.
Structural analysis of the campaign suggests a work built for emotional durability rather than immediate measurable conversion. The single-asset film format is a high-investment, high-commitment creative decision that trades reach-through-repetition for depth-through-one-encounter — a rational choice for a brand addressing a small, defined professional audience rather than a mass consumer market. In a South African open medical-scheme sector of approximately 2.38 million beneficiaries, according to Moneyweb, Profmed's addressable audience is further narrowed by its professional graduate focus, which means that precision of message and emotional specificity matter more than gross impression volume.
The campaign's Clapboard Score of 55 out of 100 reflects the limited availability of performance verification and industry recognition data, rather than a negative judgement of the creative ambition. The strategic clarity of #TheSpaceBetween — its refusal to compete on product features in a market dominated by Discovery Health — represents a coherent and defensible brand-building posture for a scheme operating with a differentiated but constrained market position.
#TheSpaceBetween is a single-asset film campaign created for Profmed by Faith and Fear in South Africa in February 2019. It repositions the medical scheme around purpose-led professional identity rather than product features, using cinematic narrative to address the psychological space between ambition and wellbeing that defines professional life.
Faith and Fear, a Johannesburg-based advertising agency, created #TheSpaceBetween for Profmed. Production credits documented in the Ads of the World archive include Taryn Sharman and Perri King. The campaign was published in February 2019 and represents a strategic shift toward human, purpose-led communication for the brand.
Profmed is a South African medical scheme designed specifically for graduates and professionals. It operates in an open medical-scheme sector that held approximately 2.38 million beneficiaries at the end of 2019, according to Moneyweb, competing against dominant players including Discovery Health, which held approximately 56.0 percent of open-scheme membership that year.
Profmed chose a single-asset film format to concentrate creative weight into one uninterrupted storytelling moment. Faith and Fear's approach prioritised emotional resonance over rational product comparison, recognising that a professional audience responds to identity-driven narrative rather than feature-led healthcare advertising typical of the South African medical aid category in 2019.
South Africa's total advertising market recorded revenue of R30.35 billion in 2019, a year-on-year increase of approximately 2.8 percent, according to Statista. Purpose-led brand film was an accelerating format within that environment, making Faith and Fear's narrative approach for Profmed consistent with broader creative trends in the market at the time of launch.
Profmed's #TheSpaceBetween holds a Clapboard Score of 55 out of 100. The score reflects limited availability of verified performance data and industry award recognition rather than a critique of creative ambition. The campaign's structural clarity and differentiated strategic positioning are noted as strengths within Clapboard's editorial analysis of the work.
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