Title	DE STANDAARD ON 1 PAGE
Brand	ALS LIGA
Product/Service	NON-PROFIT ASSOCIATION
Category	B05. Use of Print or Outdoor
Entrant	PUBLICIS BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Idea Creation	PUBLICIS BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Marc Richard Vander Heyden, Massimo De Pascale, François Massinon	Publicis Brussels	Creatives

The Campaign

ALS patients have troubles with even the simplest gestures, like turning the pages of a newspaper. That’s why we created: “De Standaard in one page“. In the night of August 10th 2016, we asked the editorial board of the national newspaper De Standaard to summarize the news and made it fit onto the cover of the paper. Normal readers were able to discover the consequences of ALS and were asked to support research. But most important is that ALS patients were able for the first time to read the newspaper without any help.

Creative Execution

The night before the publication, in collaboration with the editorial board of De Standaard, the news of the day was summarized within the created design. To make the readers feel comfortable reading this message, we chose to execute this publication in the same brand elements as the newspaper (same typography, colours,..). We wanted it to be as integrated as possible to maximize the surprise effect for the more than 360.000 De Standaard readers.

Results

Having this message on the cover of a national newspaper was a big achievement for the ALS league. In a relevant way, we impacted the more than 360.000 readers of the newspapers. Not only name awareness for ALS was increased, but the broad audience now better understands what it’s like being an ALS patient. The number of visitors on the site quadrupled, the number of donations increased 5 times during that week.

With only one publication, we clearly activated the general public as the donations for the ALS League went up by 5 in the week of the publication. And this is the biggest challenge for the ASL League: getting the required funds for research.

ALS is a disease where people eventually lose control over their arms. Hence the choice of a newspaper. And by summarizing the news of the day in collaboration with the editorial board, we made it possible for ALS patients to access the news without any help. We turned the medium into something useful for an ALS patient and into something with a lot of stopping power for the other De Standaard readers. As a result, the awareness increased towards the broad audience of what it’s like being an ALS patient.