Seeing MS – Exposing the invisible disease
MS Australia
Issue 31 | June 2014
Agency
Grey Melbourne
Creative Team
Creative Director Michael Knox Creatives Rohan Cooke Laura Petruccelli
Production Team
Head of Broadcast Sandi Gracin Digital Director Teresa Truda Filter Development Limehouse Creative Designer Claudia Di Martino Content Editor Leigh Cooke Photographers Louis Petruccelli Sara Orme Jamie MacFadyen Andreas Smetana Matt Hoyle Toby Burrows Nicholas Walton-Healey Juliet Taylor Garth Oriander Gerry Hanan
Other Credits
Business Director Claudia McInerney Senior Account Manager Catherine McDonald Strategy Planning Alice Atherton Harry Steinhart
Date
March 2014
Background
Most symptoms of multiple sclerosis go unnoticed by everyone except the person living with them. One day they can alter your memory, the next your vision. Striking without warning and leaving no trace, they are invisible.
Idea
The Seeing MS project invited nine photographers to depict each symptom in a single image, inspired by stories of those touched by the disease.
With the Seeing MS app, everyone with a camera can uncover the unseen. Photo filters based on each symptom will allow you to see and share how MS affects those living with the disease.
Results
To date the app has been downloaded over 10,000 times in over 70 countries, topping both the App Store and Google Play top charts.
The project is in the top 5% of shared campaigns in Australian history.
Our Thoughts
There is a tendency in much disease- related advertising to make sufferers look like victims. To look sick, to look unhealthy and opposite to the rest of us. The unspoken assumption is that guilt will make the donation.
This campaign gives dignity to those who have MS. Somehow, each of the photographs is a portrait of a person rising above their condition. Dimitri Cachia standing in the sea in his tuxedo is a wonderful image of a proud and strong man as well as an interpretation of what MS means to him. The shot of Jessica Anderson taken by Sara Orme to visualise brain fog reminds me of Edward Burne- Jones’s painting of Ophelia and becomes even more tragic in the association.
Asking photographers and their subjects to work together has created a gallery of memorable images. On top of that, inviting visitors to the site to upload their own shots and choose to have them distorted by fog or blurring, spasticity or dizziness, fatigue or imbalance is crucial not just in making the symptoms of MS real but also in suggesting that what has happened to them can easily happen to us.