We had three distinct problems/challenges:
We needed to destigmatise it as an ‘old persons disease’, raise awareness of the dementia journey, and promote brain health and modifiable lifestyle factors to prevent, minimise or delay onset.
Provide support to families and others trying to identify the condition, and those living with it.
With 27,000 registered charities in NZ, it’s a highly competitive market especially during a cost of living crisis. Additionally, dementia struggles to inspire hope, making fundraising difficult.
A timely collaboration with Great Southern Television led to us working together to create The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes, a TV series showing eight people with dementia working in a restaurant. It aligned perfectly with our goals.
The four 60-minute episodes aired in primetime on TVNZ 1 and streamed on TVNZ+. We supported the launch with a 4-week campaign including a 30” TVC, ad-on-pause on TVNZ+. The TVC featured diverse talent, sympatico with our messaging about dementia affecting different ages, and providing mystery around who had dementia.
The normal annualised donations for the period increased 500% and overall donor numbers increased 650%.
The combination of The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes and the corresponding advertising campaign spiked record visits to dementia.nz. Website traffic achieved 13,700 users for the period 14 June to 14 July, compared to normal user traffic averaging 6,000 a month.
For the core “eldest daughter” segment (females 45-64) we reached an astonishing 307,181 individuals or 45.6% of the total potential with total TARPs of 126.
Reached over 240K with over 12,500 interactions.
