Dutch charity Stichting Alzheimer Nederland had two objectives: First, to help Alzheimer’s patients retrieve long-lost memories through the use of music by giving their carers easy access to personal favourites; second, to raise awareness of the disease and its effects.

A year earlier, the charity had sponsored a TV programme called ‘Music Memories’ in which well-known artists performed popular songs of the past. It succeeded on one level but it lacked personalization. For music to be really effective, the listener needed direct access to the particular songs that would evoke very personal feelings and memories. So we formed a partnership with Spotify, built a platform where anyone could access playlists for free, and used social media to build awareness of the disease.

Using Facebook, search and newsletters, we drove online traffic to a specially-created ‘Music Memories’ platform on Spotify. It offered: four fixed playlists covering different decades, with 50 popular songs from each era; a choice of other personal favourites, which users could also add to; and a page where visitors could learn about Alzheimer’s and donate funds. Audio spots, home page takeovers, billboards and rectangles on Spotify were also used to drive traffic to the platform and build brand awareness.

A remarkable 1,313 playlists were created. The Spotify ‘Music Memories’ platform generated almost 50,000 clicks in total and analysis of these clicks shows that ratios were high among the under 45s – a group with low involvement levels with Alzheimer’s. Aided Brand Awareness also rose from 69% to 72% while preference increased from 12% to 14%.

Stichting Alzheimer Nederland used music playlists to bring patients and carers together. With the appropriate music, which was made easily accessible, sufferers could retrieve memories that might otherwise be gone forever. As two sufferers said, after listening to their personalised play lists, “It was nice to think back to that time in my life again,” and “It gave us pleasure to re-live old memories. It brought back a lot of old stories.”