CAMPAIGN SUMMARY

2011 was the “International year of Alzheimer’s disease” with the World Summit on Alzheimer Research being held in Madrid.

The Queen Sofia Foundation was one of the main organizers, having spent a number of years conducting important research into Alzheimer's disease. For this reason we were tasked to create and rollout a campaign with the objective of raising awareness amongst the general public of the importance of further research into this disease, which today still has no cure and whose statistics are chilling to the ear.

We needed to reach out to as many people as we possibly could, addressing a tough issue whilst striving to avoid any rejection.

We decided that the best way to do this would be to actively engage citizens in the campaign and make them participants. And what better way to get closer to them than through their personal memories; we all have our own precious memories, which unfortunately happen to be the first thing that disappear when the disease appears.

And so the Memory Bank was born; the first national Memory Bank of its kind in Spain. (www.bancoderecuerdos.es). Here we had a website where memories that we could never imagine losing, whether in written letter, photo or video format, could now be stored safely away in a special drawer.

Memories became the lead characters of this campaign: anyone could take part by storing (donating) their own personal memories, they could also help financially by sponsoring the memories of others. These memories also forged the cornerstone for all elements of the campaign (memories of anonymous individuals, many influencers in Spanish society, associations, brands or programs which were stored in audiovisual or audio format).

The campaign was active throughout 2011, generating significant media buzz and gaining impressive results: 93% coverage of the Spanish population (Source: Kantar Media), raising € 450,000 for research into Alzheimer's disease (Source: Queen Sofia Foundation) and more importantly, over 35,500 personal memories stored away.

The Memory Bank www.bancoderecuerdos.es continues active to this day.