Alzheimer’s group aims efforts at baby boomers

By Alvin Hattal

(Published in PR Week)

As more than 70 million baby boomers get ready for retirement, the Alzheimer’s Association is targeting the group with a $20 million campaign to raise funds and awareness

Over the past two decades, the growing senior market has called increasing attention in the past two decades to one of the world’s most dreaded diseases. And with more than 70 million baby boomers nearing retirement, the Alzheimer’s Association is responding dramatically. In February the 24-year-old organization launched their aggressive drive to change the way people think about the disease and to raise the funds needed to educate potential donors.                   

Alzheimer’s was identified just 100 years ago and currently affects 4.5 million Americans. Yet many people still don’t know how recent medical advances have changed the outlook for its victims. Much, if not most, of what is known has resulted from efforts by the relatively young organization, which has funded more than $150 million in research grants to find a cure for the disease.

The PR and advertising portion of the branding effort is $5-million, an increase over the $2-million budget the previous year for PR.  Of the $5 million, about $3.5 million is for PR and communications this year. The draft budget for the next fiscal year is $7.5 million, of which about $4.5 million will be for PR.

The group is also aggressively targeting baby boomers for the first time, along with Americans already in their sixties, says Kathryn Kane, the association’s senior vice president for brand management and marketing.

“Right now, a lot of them are not even thinking about the disease,” Kane told PR Week. “Most simply tune it out. But boomers often lead social change, so we want to get it on their radar screen. Our communications goal is to make the disease less frightening to people by telling them of the incredible progress we’ve made in science. We want to make its prevention and cure the top item on their agenda by giving them hope, as well as information.”

Goals and challenges

In view of the recent progress in research and treatment, one goal of the campaign is to get people to change their way of life and be ready for breakthroughs AA confidently expects in the next 10 years. Specifically, Kane explains, “That involves adopting a proactive lifestyle to ensure they age the way they want to.” Thus the campaign theme, “Maintain Your Brain.”

“Big percentages of people don’t know the disease can be diagnosed and that treatments are available,” Kane says. “Many things can be done with their support, and we want to give them a sense of empowerment about it because boomers can be the first generation to face the future without the threat of Alzheimer’s.”

The other, basic challenge for the Chicago-based association is its own survival. Three years ago, after realizing there was confusion involving its 220 chapters, it consolidated them into 80 to avoid the mixed messages reaching the public, on which it depends for the bulk of its donations. Tracking studies showed the association itself had “no identity” and low name recognition, Kane says. As a result, many contributions intended for the mother association never reached it.

In preparation for the drive, AA conducted a consumer-awareness survey in December 2002. It indicated that half the number of Americans know someone with Alzheimer’s, but that their understanding of it was very low, says Chuck Merydith, AA’s public relations director. “That was a big motive for the campaign,” he says.

Finding the right PR firm

The agency search began last June with the help of MatchWorks, a New York agency search firm that had previously conducted a similar search for AARP, whose board includes AA’s president and CEO, Sheldon Goldberg, Merydith says.

Jan Boyle, managing partner of MatchWorks, says it advised AA that, since this was the first time it was “going to market,” it needed to find a combination of partners with different skills, with emphasis on PR, and experience in fund-raising in the public policy field.

“We were looking for a PR firm that could provide strong strategic leadership in counseling and direction for a not-for-profit organization that was in transition,” says Boyle. “It had to have a proven understanding of social and public policy trends, specifically those associated with health-care and disease management.”

MatchWorks laid down a strict set of criteria. Besides having an understanding of the behavior of a highly diverse audience, says Boyle, “The firm we wanted had to have the ability to develop a focused and compelling positioning for the organization to drive all internal and external communications.”

Among other assets, Boyle says, “The agency had to have an in-depth understanding of not-for-profit marketing and the challenges involved in reconciling the needs of the social mission with the need for fund-raising.”

And to help Chicago-based AA coordinate those PR goals with its nationwide affiliates, the chosen agency needed to be able to build an effective and responsive field-marketing system for the association’s 80 chapters.

During a four-month review that began last June, MatchWorks screened eight firms, finally narrowing it down to two. In a “final assignment” that lasted two months and had them fine tune their “visions,” Omnicom’s team of Porter Novelli, direct marketers Rapp Collins and fundraisers Changing Our World bested Interpublic’s Weber Shandwick, McCann-Erickson and MRM Partners for the account.

Seeking to boost support

“The inclusion of baby boomers for the first time significantly increases both our constituency and supporters,” says David Zucker, executive VP of Porter-Novelli’s CauseWorks, who is heading the PR side of the campaign. “Our message explains four basic ways they can help themselves. Basically, they need to be aware of available information about the disease, know there is good reason for hope, get personally involved in the effort to cure it and be an advocate for it.

“Individual behavior,” Zucker explains, “relates to health (what’s good for your heart is good for your brain). With an understanding of the progress that’s been made and the tremendous momentum we now have, the scenario is a hopeful one. But supporters need to get involved by writing to Congress for more government support and funding for research on this issue. That kind of collective effort can lead to an ultimate cure.”

Those points--especially the significant progress that has been made--will be further detailed to a wide variety of audiences, ranging from the scientific and medical community down to consumers, at a major science conference in Philadelphia in July, Zucker says.

“Our hope is that by continuing to get those messages out through a variety of channels that are targeted to the baby boomer audience,” he adds, “we will be making this issue much more relevant to them and make them more likely to support the association, especially with donations.”

The association is already using its existing events—galas, science conference and public policy forums--as platforms to promote its branding messages and reposition itself as the leader.

In its public affairs activities in Washington, AA, which has the world’s largest research program for the disease outside the federal government, is seeking more federal funding for research into treatment and prevention. To help with that, the group is working on establishing a coalition of partners around the country. “So far,” says Kane, “we have 150 organizations representing 50 million Americans who have all signed a pledge to help support the campaign. We were able to tell to a Senate subcommittee in April.”

AA is seeking $1-billion from the government for clinical trials and to test possible treatments more quickly to find out who is at risk and how to intervene sooner. Realistically, the association doesn’t expect to get more than a 3% increase over its present funding of $680-million, but it is targeting “influencers,” primarily policy makers, boomers and high-end donors, Kane says. “We’ll also be doing media relations and advertising with the Hill publications, which we’ve never done before.

“Our ultimate goal,” she adds, “is to cure the disease and put ourselves out of business.”

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