Alicia’s Story | Alzheimer Society of Ontario

HEALTHCARE

Building a communications system capable of carrying the lived reality of dementia

THE CHALLENGE

Alzheimer's disease does not affect one person.

It moves through families, caregiving networks, and entire communities. The Alzheimer Society of Ontario needed to communicate across audiences whose experiences of dementia were fundamentally different: individuals receiving a diagnosis, family members confronting what that diagnosis means for their daily life, professional caregivers on the front lines, and a broader public whose understanding of dementia shapes everything from policy and funding to the conditions of care.

Each audience needed something different from the same story. Families needed intimacy and recognition. Caregivers needed visibility and respect. The public needed connection to a reality most people avoid until it arrives in their own home.

The challenge was not a lack of stories to tell. It was the absence of a communications structure capable of holding them coherently, carrying them across platforms and audiences, and sustaining a campaign that would build understanding, shift attitudes, and change behaviour over time.

WHAT BECAME CLEAR

Traditional awareness campaigns in the health sector tend to lead with information: statistics, symptoms, and stages of disease. Information matters. But information alone rarely changes behaviour or deepens understanding. The story had to begin where the audience already was: in the intimate, daily reality of a family navigating the disease together.

Film became the medium capable of carrying the emotional complexity.

WHAT WE BUILT

We began with Alicia.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease fourteen years earlier, we were invited into Alicia’s family home. Through a five-part documentary series, we set out to tell a story many awareness campaigns never fully reach: the grace, strain, humour, heartbreak, and quiet acts of devotion that shape life inside a family living with dementia.

At the centre of the story was Alicia's relationship with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.

The films allowed audiences to encounter dementia not as a medical diagnosis or statistic, but as a lived reality. Viewers witnessed Alicia's challenges and efforts, her family’s care and exhaustion, moments of frustration alongside moments of tenderness and joy.  

This is a disease that affects everyone around it, carrying real emotional, practical and relational consequences. Yet through the heartbreak, there are visible moments of lucidity, connection, and love that refuse to be diminished. The documentary series became the anchor for a broader integrated campaign built around a single idea:

OUR CONNECTIONS MATTER

The campaign was designed to strengthen awareness and understanding of dementia and Alzheimer's across Ontario, increase knowledge for prevention and support, and create conditions for meaningful shifts in perception and behaviour over time.

BUILDING THE COMMUNICATIONS ARCHITECTURE

The films were only one part of the work.

To ensure the story could travel, we developed an integrated communications ecosystem designed to build participation, deepen engagement, and extend the campaign across multiple contexts.

This included multi-platform content development, cross-sector partnerships, stakeholder engagement, and communications strategies designed to connect the work to healthcare, community, and public conversations where greater understanding could have lasting impact.

The goal was not simply emotional response.

It was sustained relevance.

HOW THE WORK WAS STRUCTURED

The engagement moved through all three layers of our practice.

We began with diagnosis: research into audience needs, the narrative landscape, and gaps in how Alzheimer’s and dementia were being communicated across the province.

From there, we designed the narrative architecture: a strategic framework connecting purpose (building understanding and changing behaviour) to audience (families, caregivers, the public) to evidence (the lived experience of people navigating the disease every day). 

The creative activation that followed was built on that foundation. Every decision, from the documentary framework to the music, from the graphic overlays to the partner presentations, was shaped by the structural work that preceded it.

SCOPE OF WORK

• Research and strategic planning.

• Documentary film framework and narrative design.

• Art direction, storyboarding, production, music, graphic overlays, and editing for a five-part film series.

• Multi-platform integrated impact campaign.

• Cross-sector partnership development and incubation.

• Partner presentations.

• Print and digital campaign development.

WHAT THIS WORK DEMONSTRATES

This engagement reflects what becomes possible when communications are built on strong structural foundations rather than produced alongside them.

The films are powerful because the architecture beneath them was clear. The campaign sustained itself across platforms because the narrative was designed to hold complexity, not simplify it. And the partnerships that carried the story into new contexts were possible because the communications structure was coherent enough to travel.

The Alzheimer Society did not need a better message. They needed a way to carry a complex, evolving story across multiple audiences with greater coherence, compassion and reach.

That is what we built together.

"The Higher Ground Collective team is set up to support your team to help meet all your goals. They have assisted with our internal communications challenges, reviewing how to engage our stakeholders in a more interesting and meaningful way, a brand audit, and so much more."

- Shawn Paron, Chief Operating Officer, Alzheimer Society of Ontario