Lost in the Metro
ICM – The Brain And Spine Institute
Issue 27 | July 2013
Agency
Publicis Conseil, Paris
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Olivier Altmann Creative Director: Olivier Altmann Copywriter: Thierry Lebec Art Director: Benedicte Potel AD Assistant: Magali Valencia
Production Team
Film Production, Director, Film Editor (WAM): Guillaume Schmitt Print Production Photographer: Benny Valsson Art Buyer: Anne Traonouil (Elysian Fields)
Other Credits
Account Managers: Gaelle Morvan, Patricia Denis-du-Peage ICM: Professor Gerard Saillant, Mrs Alexandrine Maviel-Sonet, Mrs Celine Amet
Date
March 2013
Background
In France, Alzheimer's disease and illnesses of the brain and spinal cord affect 1 in 8 people. Faced with this, it is important not only to react and to show what the consequences of these illnesses can be, but also to make people conscious of the fact that they don't just happen to others. By donating to the ICM you will be providing research workers with the wherewithal to find cures for them.
Publicis Conseil, ICM's long-time partner, has designed advertising displays, focusing on an appeal for donations and seeking to create personal awareness among as many people as possible. The campaign is intended to shock and to question, the opposite of customary appeals for donations, making no bones of the fact that the afflicted will not be thanking those who give and with good reason, because their illnesses prevent them from doing so.
Idea
In support of this initiative to stimulate awareness, the Parisian Public Transport Authority (RATP) and Publicis Conseil, both long-standing sponsors of the Institute, conceived an event whose intention was to bring home to transport system users the harsh realities of Alzheimer's disease. For a whole day, in a very busy Paris Metro station, a trap was set to force commuters to confront the illness and to make them more empathetic towards its sufferers.
The real Metro maps were replaced by false ones on which station names had been removed leaving no indication of their identity. It was consequently impossible for users to know where they were or to find their way around the system... in other words, placing them in precisely the same situation in which people suffering from Alzheimer's disease find themselves. Volunteers and ICM researchers were on hand to give out information to the Metro users on all neurological and neuro-degenerative diseases.
See the video of the event on the website: icm-institute.org