ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease is an incurable and deadly disease. On average patients die within three years after being diagnosed. In the Netherlands many people are unaware of the disease and its impact. The ALS Foundation Netherlands, with only a few employees at their disposal, has never succeeded to break through the clutter of all other charities asking for recognition and money. So the objective of the creative work was to make more people aware of this unknown disease, increase willingness-to-give and to increase donations.

The strategy was based on confronting people with the fatal destiny of the patient. We asked patients to make statements, which are aired after they have died. The impact of the campaign is based on the sudden awareness that the person talking to and looking at you, is no longer among us.

Under the watchful eyes of friends and family nine ALS patients participated in a film and photo shoot.. In the recorded commercials patients tell when they were diagnosed with ALS, make a public appeal to raise awareness of ALS and collect money for scientific research. They end their request with the statement: I ask this not for myself, because I have already died. The headline in print and outdoor is similar: I have already died. Because all campaign statements are aired only after the patients have passed away.

Although the ALS Foundation Netherlands has no campaign budget at all and depends on free ad space, the campaign ran on TV and radio, outdoor, in cinemas, via bannering, social media, a website and in print. The campaign received a lot of media attention.

The results:

• Awareness of ALS increased from 62% before the campaign start to 88% in Feb 2013

• Willingness-to-donate increased from 27% before the campaign start to 45% in Feb 2013

• The aided advertising recall of the campaign in Feb 2013 was 77%

• The spontaneous advertising recall of the campaign in Feb 2013 was 43%

• 1 out of 4 people in The Netherlands can spontaneously recall the key message ‘I have already died’ as the message of the ALS campaign

As a result of all this the donations to the ALS Foundation Netherlands increased with 259%

from 798.337 euro in 2011 to 2.069.310 euro in 2012.

The total income of the ALS Foundation Netherlands increased from 1.025.945 euro in 2011 to 2.513.869 euro in 2012.