2016 Winners & Shortlists

Creative Execution

To make young people understand Alzhiemers we needed them to experience short-term memory loss- the key symptom of Alzheimers disease. But preaching about it in mass media won’t work with the youth. We needed something which was personal and impactful. Our research showed that Snapchat was very popular amongst UAE youth. Latest data suggests 12% of smartphone users in UAE use Snapchat. The unique aspect of Snapchat is to enable users to share messages which disappear in a few seconds. What if we could use the disappearing nature of Snapchat content to help people experience Memory Loss ?

On World Alz Day 21st September, we launched #MemoriesMatter in partnership with Getty Images Drawing parallels between Memory loss and disappearing images we created 3 Snapchats featuring memories in the form of nostalgic family photos which disappear in a few seconds and are then followed by the message ‘Alzheimers Erases Your Memories, Let’s Erase Alzheimers”. The content was sent to almost 9200 Snapchat users and used Instagram to amplify the conversations The campaign became a talking point. Snapchat influencers and media partners like Good Health Arabia, Khaleej Times, Sky News Arabia joined in to spark a nationwide conversation about Alzheimers.

Today’s young generation does not understand Alzheimers. They often dismiss it ‘just a normal part of old age’ There are over 5000 Alzheimer sufferers in UAE, yet no one knows or even talks about it. If we don’t act now, there will be 6 times more sufferers by 2020. The only way to beat the disease is to make people aware and get them to talk about it. And this is what Project We Forgot needed to achieve. But how do you do that on a zero budget