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Clever Facebook campaign uses Photoshop + fake events to create Alzheimer’s experience

It was a month-long campaign to give average people a glimpse into what it’s like to have Alheimer’s disease — if only for a moment.

ALZHEIMER NEDERLAND – The Alzheimer’s Event [casefilm] 2:00″ from N=5 on Vimeo.

We’ve all been there:
“Hey, I wasn’t at that birthday party. Wait … was I?”

It has happened to every Facebook user — a friend accidentally tags you in a photo and you have a moment of confusion.

A Dutch Alzheimer’s group took that common Facebook mistake a step further.

First the advocacy group, Alzheimer Nederland, teamed up with local Dutch organizations who hosted real events and used their Facebook pages and photos to carry out the campaign. The groups created fake events and posted pictures from these “events” on Facebook. The scary part? Facebook users were photoshopped into these pictures at events that they never attended. Organizers and people in on the ruse purposefully tagged Dutch celebrities in these photos to intentionally cause confusion. People could also submit their own friends’ photos and have them added in to these fake event pictures.

After a Facebook user was tagged in a photo they were not really in, they received this message: “Confusing, right? You’re now experiencing what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s disease.”

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It was a month-long campaign to give average people a glimpse into what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s disease — if only for a moment.

The confusion may have lasted for only a second, but Alzheimer Nederland’s message is one you can’t forget. Not only was it a success for the group’s Facebook page, which now boasts 3,360 “likes” as of Jan. 28, 2014, but it will hopefully leave a lasting message that causes people to get involved in Alzheimer’s awareness.