Walk for us, says Alzheimer charity

The Alzheimer’s Society is urging people to walk and raise money for its cause in a major integrated campaign by Lida, running across TV, radio, posters and digital.
The initiative, which breaks today (July 6), promotes the charity’s biggest annual event Memory Walk, targeting women aged between 35 and 64. Media strategy and activation has been handled by M2M.
Dementia is one of the UK’s biggest health challenges, and it has been estimated that by 2021 one million people will be living with the disease.
Memory Walks will take place across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and aim to raise awareness of dementia. The fundraising target is £3.3m.
The centrepiece of the campaign is a DRTV ad, developed by Lida. The voiceover is written by the granddaughter of the actual couple who feature. It is the plea of a woman living with dementia, asking people to walk for her devoted husband who has been by her side throughout. The execution is deliberately low-fi, using real and unretouched images of the couple and accompanied by a simple, honest piano track.
The scene closes with a current photograph of the couple, with a call to action to sign up to take part in the walk, driving viewers to www.memorywalk.org.uk
Lida executive creative director Nicky Bullard said: “The challenge was to create compelling work on a shoestring. Work that didn’t just ask people to walk, but moved them to walk. There’s no fancy tech here, just a simple, powerful and real story about a devoted husband, a woman in the midst of the condition and a granddaughter who misses her Nan.”
Building on the TV ad, Lida has also created a series of out of home (poster) executions focusing on the same couple. One, ‘walk for my wife’, features an old black and white photograph of the young couple, this time with words by the husband to his wife: “For my love, who’s been by my side for over 50 years. For her courage, in her confusion; for her humour, in our hardest times; for our lifetime of memories, too many forgotten; for a world without dementia.”
The last line encourages people to join a local walk this September with a link to the campaign website.

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