Title	THE WRITE THING FOR PARKINSON
Brand	VLAAMSE PARKINSON LIGA VZW (FLEMISH PARKINSON ASSOCIATION)
Product/Service	INTEREST GROUP
Category	B01. Education & Awareness
Entrant Company	BBDO BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Advertising Agency	BBDO BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Production Company	POLYPRINT Herzele, BELGIUM
Production Company 2	CAVIAR Brussels, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Jan Dejonghe	Bbdo Belgium	Creative Director
Sebastien De Valck	Bbdo Belgium	Creative Director
Arnaud Pitz	Bbdo Belgium	creative director
Klaartje Galle	BBDO Belgium	Art director
Régine Smetz	BBDO Belgium	Copywriter
Maarten Renders	Vlaamse Parkinson Liga	Patient/concept assistent
Carl Van Den Hove	BBDO Belgium	Account director
Tom Vingerhoets	BBDO Belgium	Strategy
Eric Leurquin	BBDO Belgium	Design director
Stefan Ceunen	BBDO Belgium	Social media director
Ellen Pottoms	BBDO Belgium	Community manager
Laura Van Roey	BBDO Belgium	Content producer
Sofie Verschaeren	BBDO Belgium	Print producer
Thérèse Deru	BBDO Belgium	Print producer
Patricia Van De Kerckhove	BBDO Belgium	Producer
Niki Michiels	Caviar	Producer
Joris Rabijns	Caviar	Director
Wim Vanswijgenhoven	Caviar	DOP Lighting Cameraman
Pieter Van Dessel	Freelance	Music
Sander Vandenbroucke	Freelance	Online video

The Brief

The main goal of the campaign was to create awareness around Parkinson’s by the general public in Flanders (Belgium). Before this campaign Parkinson’s never got attention in the media, contrary to cancer for instance. We also noticed a lack of understanding of the disease. Most people don't realize it can also affect younger people, and don't know the social consequences (e.g. job loss and isolation). But patients not only need awareness, they need therapy too. We combined an awareness campaign with writing therapy. Since research showed writing on a daily basis helped Parkinson’s patients to maintain their fine motor skills.

Creative Execution

We chose to launch a positive and activating campaign and combined awareness to the general public with a writing therapy for patients. We invited people to help Parkinson’s patients with their fine motor skills while surprising their loved ones with a handwritten message. We generated traffic to our online platform through TV, Facebook, and PR-plan targeting famous Belgian influentials who spread our message through social channels. People had to send their personal text messages via Dothewitething.be and then patients handwrote those messages on the front of a beautiful postcard (one to one). The post-card contained a member-gets-member mechanism to stimulate further participation in the campaign. The campaign conveyed a clear awareness message by extrapolating one aspect of Parkinson (handwriting) and combining this with a personal message towards our target audience.

By airing the TVC in prime time we reached 2.916.444 Flemish people in two weeks time and made them more aware of Parkinson's disease. We also gained awareness on Facebook through 288.875 impressions and on Instagram through 625.000 impressions, thanks to the support of many Flemish celebrities. The campaign generated more than € 300.000 in earned media (through Instagram, Facebook, press content, radio & TV). During the 5 weeks the online campaign ran, 16.975 visitors of the online/mobile platform Dothewritething.be got an even better understanding of Parkinson's disease. We converted those visits and other impressions in more than 2000 sent personal, handwritten cards. Spreading the message even further. So finally we gained more than 1.200 hours worth of therapy for the PD patients. Without a doubt the most important number in these results.

Our strategy was to break the ‘trembling’ taboo of Parkinson’s by focusing on an unknown symptom of the disease namely the gradual loss of their fine motor skills like writing. Research showed writing on a daily basis helps patients to slow down this loss. So we based our whole campaign on this insight. And on the insight the digital natives of today hardly handwrite anymore which increases the power of a handwritten message.