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With two in three people affected by dementia being women, WongDoody created a multimedia campaign called ‘Wild & Precious’ to raise awareness and outline the impact of dementia on women, supported by the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI).

The project leveraged the cherished memories from incredible women living with the illness and through emergent technologies, built a virtual ‘Museum of Memories’ that showcased curated memories brought to life in photorealistic 4D digital experiences with accompanying voice over from the contributor. Additionally, a series of short documentaries focused on women with dementia, Tik-Tok and Instagram creators expressed their experiences and OOH spaces were used as poetry walls for further memories.

All the memories are being preserved in the Blockchain, meaning they will never change, and most importantly, never disappear.

Dementia disproportionately impacts women:

• It is the leading cause of death for UK women.
• 65% of people with dementia are women.
• Two thirds of unpaid dementia carers are women.
  

This issue is deeply rooted in the Patriarchy. Women receive worse healthcare than men in the UK—the largest gender healthcare gap in the G20 and are less likely to be included in clinical trials. The gap is further widened when it comes to people of colour due to health system inequalities – a situation that impacts particularly Black and South Asian women.

Our client Dementia Research Institute (UKDRI) and their partner charity Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK) want women to know the facts about dementia—because now 35% of dementia is preventable.

We were tasked with telling the complete story by raising awareness, reducing stigma, and sharing preventative actions with women against dementia.

We worked with the UKDRI, the UK’s leading biomedical research institute dedicated to neurodegenerative diseases, and the UK leading dementia charity, ARUK. Utilising their archives and unreleased reports to develop a collective information foundation on how women are impacted by dementia.

We closely aligned with the institutions’ community and engagement teams, conducting dozens of interviews, visiting support groups, and contacting auxiliary networks, to find the right collaborators who represented the various ways women experience dementia and to reflect race, ethnicity, age ranges and relationships with the illness.

Our strategy was built around ‘emotion to education’, creating a safe space that honours and utilises these women’s experiences of the illness to resonate and educate other women. We focused on their most cherished memories – the moments dementia may cruelly take away from them. We wanted to tell these stories in a variety of ways which matched the unique and varied experiences of these women.

Leveraging various creative mechanics including digital spaces, short film, social creators, and long-form copy writing across an integrated multimedia approach that was led by an earned media first creative idea to drive PR coverage alongside creator activity which was then supported concurrently with traditional advertising executions such as OOH and Print directed audiences back to our core creative idea.

We created ‘Wild & Precious’ – the first virtual Museum of Memories bringing memories to life from women in the UK dementia community, built using innovative new techniques and emergent technology.

These curated moments are both heart-warming and heart-wrenching as they showcase celebrations of life but simultaneously outline the impact dementia has on their lives, knowing that participants are likely to lose the memories themselves due to the illness.

The museum is designed as a digital space, to tell stories that could not be created in the physical world.

Using creations tools usually found in the film and gaming industries (Cinema 4D, Redshift, After Effects) to build and render these rooms, we developed a museum building that is recognizable but when engaged with becomes spectacular, showing these memories not as relics but moments full of vitality.

We then stored the memories in the blockchain as a gift to participants, knowing that their piece of personal history remains intact for their families and the wider world as a digital heirloom, never to disappear.

To get people to visit The Museum of Memories we needed to be both broad to speak to the UK’s population but also target those most at risk – the Black and South Asian communities, all whilst educating the next generation of women.

‍Film Content: We created a series of short documentaries, shot by director Liz Unna to tell intimate, bittersweet memories of women with early on-set dementia. Used primarily as earned and owned channels assets to drive people towards the Museum of Memories to ‘find out more’. This earned outreach was supported by key statistics from the UK DRI/ARUK research and interview time with a UK DRI spokesperson, the director, and a campaign participant.

Influencer Campaign: A focused TikTok and Instagram social campaign that spoke directly to young women of colour with content that linked through to the Museum. Our 6x influencers all had personally experienced dementia. They highlighted that 3% of people with dementia are people of colour and that this number is expected to double by 2026, putting POC women at a higher risk.

Advertising Spaces: A nationwide targeted media buy where we placed moving poems of women’s memories in these public spaces for people to read. This is a homage to the inspiration for ‘Wild & Precious’ -a poem by the American writer Mary Oliver, ‘The Summer Day’ which has the final line: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life?”

We appeared in specific locations with high a population of South Asian communities (Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester) with streethub digital screens for two weeks.

Running alongsidea OOH placement in London’s Leicester Square (see below) – one of the capital’s highest footfall areas for two consecutive weekends.

This all coincided with a full-page print ad in the Metro (see below) on the launch day of the London billboards to create a focus on the capital’s commuters.

Our earned media campaign focused on health, women, innovation, and lifestyle press scored hero pieces on BBC Radio, Metro, TrendHunter, Sustain-Health and Women’s Journal. The Drum crowned us the Ad of the Day.

With a PR reach of 1.25 million the campaign went on to be featured on academic sites including King’s College London and University College London.

Our digital OOH regional streethubs played 496,884 times (with a delivery rate of 164%), sharing preventative actions directly with women in areas most impacted by Dementia (Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester).

In Leicester Square the work had 49,966 plays (delivery rate of 298%) and an estimated reach of 750k people alongside the Metro full page advert which has a reach of 1.8 million.

The targeted social campaign saw a completely organic reach of 125,000+ views, 15,000+ likes and an average engagement rate of 10.5% (vs an industry average of 4.5%) whilst our lead creator had an engagement rate of 22%.

‘Wild &Precious’ specifically addresses the fact that, for over a decade, dementia has been the leading cause of death for women in the UK and remains the illness they fear most.

The ‘Wild & Precious’ campaign is determined to tackle this, hoping to spread awareness and educate women about the condition, how to take steps to keep their brains healthy and most importantly, reduce the risk of dementia later in life. 

And the trifecta results speak for themselves.

The multifaceted campaign had a 102m reach across press, 1.9m estimated reach through our advertising efforts and a social reach of 770k.

The best part?

The campaign went beyond just awareness and punchy stats, it provided real solutions – encouraging people to register for Join Dementia Research to be a part of vital studies, whilst also offering targeted advice and help on protecting brain health, by visiting Alzheimer’s Research UK’s ‘Think Brain Health’ ‘Check-in’ tool.