Two new campaigns I wanted to share for the same reason: using digital to raise awareness and action of two serious health issues by doing something interesting.

Memories Matter

Do you have a favourite memory? Something that you always look back on and smile? Domain have just launched a new campaign for the Alzheimer’s Research Trust including a microsite which stores peoples’ memories forever. The site demonstrates that without more funding for research into dementia, this is what we stand to lose. Sadly, dementia set to double within a generation. The site is a blend of real people and celeb memories including Terry Pratchett (the world’s most “famous” sufferer of Alzheimer’s) and others including Michael Parkinson, Felicity Kendall, Patrick Moore, Gordon Brown and loads more.  When you read some, you’ll laugh out loud. Read others and you’ll be quite choked. So many people, so many very personal memories.

This is quite close to my heart as my grandfather suffered from Alzheimer’s and it’s so heart breaking to see the inevitable decline from a once strong and clever man through the comedy moments of losing his glasses and they’re on top of his head all the time & deciding to flush tea towels down the toilet instead of the washing machine; to living in a different time period where he recognized nobody and nothing around him and the fear and anger this created inside him. Worse still was the decline in his health through the disease, the tension it caused in his relationships with his wife of over 50 years, his daughter and the inter-family relationships that are hard-wired into that bond. Sadly the mental decline and the need for constant care saw him spend his latter days in a care home where it was so painful to see someone you love literally wilt away.

Alzheimer’s is not a sexy charity in the way Cancer Research or stuff for kids is but it’s a cruel disease robbing people of their memories and ultimately their lives. Please support this campaign. Well done, Catch.

A hard Story About a Soft Subject

[Site / You Tube Channel]

Obviously this isn’t one I’m familiar with but a wonderful take on a serious issue – erectile dysfunction. Profero have teamed up with Aardman films to create a series of short films about Dennis and his journey from Droop to Don Juan for Bayer-Schering pharma. In England, we’re very bad at admitting any health problem – unlike our American friends who appear to hold in high esteem their physical and psychological problems and will happily tell you all and the drugs their taking too. Over here, we just ignore it and hope it will go away. Not so easy when it’s a condition that affects millions of men over 40. I particularly like the disengaging tone and the way the truths of the problem come through (no pun intended) by being entertaining and engaging. In this overly-cluttered advertising world, doing something interesting is the only way to get noticed. This has it spades. Thanks to Nick Clarke for sharing.

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