We asked Dutch top fashion designers the late Frans Molenaar, who suffered from Alzheimer’s himself, and his former pupil Mart Visser to design two different socks. Each pair symbolizes the confused state of mind Alzheimer patients struggle with every day. The profit goes to research at the VUmc Alzheimer centre in Amsterdam.

By buying a pair, people support research and by wearing the socks in public they show their involvement with people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. By doing this they’re actively helping finding a cure. Wearers make a ‘statement’, and automatically turn into ambassadors, or even fundraisers, for research. The socks function as a conversation starter on the streets since people wearing them are almost forced to explain why they’re wearing a nonmatching pair. The personal involvement creates a strong, touting story.

We chose to launch Alzheimer SOCKS as a fashion brand via PR on World Alzheimer’s Day. Dutch celebrities wearing the socks and telling our story on major television shows and on their social media channels created national publicity immediately. This made the socks desirable for the Dutch audience. Since we aim to sell as many pairs as possible we chose for the best availability, offering Alzheimer SOCKS at national everyday retailers in the Netherlands and our online shop.

After celebrities gave the right example sock buyers demonstrated the desired action: posting pictures of themselves wearing Alzheimer SOCKS on their social media channels.

All this attention immediately resulted in tons of off- and online store traffic.

With our PR-launch on World Alzheimer’s Day we got attention on 7 national television shows, 44 print publications and more than 70 online articles in no-time, representing a media-value of more than € 600.000*. People sharing pictures of themselves wearing the socks got millions of earned impressions, and made #AlzheimerSOCKS trending topic this day. We sold more than 90% of the available Alzheimer SOCKS during the campaign. But even more important: we created long lasting visibility and a huge contribution to research.

*source: LEWIS.