CAPTURE ALS Brand Identity: ALS Research Project
CAPTURE ALS
For people living with ALS, answers can’t wait. Building the brand behind a $30M research platform.
The Challenge
CAPTURE ALS — a Canadian platform uniting patients, physicians, researchers, and industry to build the most comprehensive biological picture of ALS ever created — existed as an idea long before it existed as something people could see, trust, and join.
With $30M in funding and an ambitious mandate to recruit participants, connect clinicians, and attract researchers across Canada and globally, the initiative needed more than a name and a stack of documents. It needed an identity that could do real work: make something brand new feel credible enough to participate in, fund, and champion.
The internal skepticism made the stakes higher. A lead executive didn’t believe researchers would care about branding. The assumption was that scientists follow the science, not the story. That assumption needed to be tested; and ultimately, overturned.
My Role
Marketing leader and brand project lead, working in close collaboration with the ALS Canada research team and branding agency B3strategy.
My job sat at the intersection of three things: translating the research team’s vision into something a brand agency could execute, protecting that vision when internal pressure pushed toward watering it down, and steering direction when stakeholders were divided.
One of the clearest examples of that tension: the research team’s instinct was to lead with scientific language — precise, technical, credible to their peers. My push was to balance that with plain language that patients, caregivers, and funders could actually connect with. A platform that couldn’t recruit participants or sustain funding relationships wouldn’t survive on scientific credibility alone. The brand had to work for everyone the initiative depended on.
The
Approach
CAPTURE ALS needed to speak to four distinct audiences simultaneously — funders, patients, clinicians, and researchers — without losing coherence. Without all four engaged, the project couldn’t function. That’s not a typical brand brief.
The work included:
- Key messaging framework that could flex across scientific and lay audiences
- Logo suite and full visual identity
- Stationery system
- Brand identity guide to ensure consistent execution over time
- Website (captureals.ca, launched December 2021)
The CAPTURE acronym — Comprehensive Analysis Platform To Understand, Remedy, and Eliminate — came in with the project. My job was to breathe life into what it stood for, and build a brand that made the mission feel as significant as it actually was.
Visual Showcase
Brand brought to life
Visual brand identity/logos (English and French)
Stationery Suite Design
Website Design
The Outcome
Once CAPTURE ALS had a visual identity and a website, it stopped being a concept and became something researchers, clinicians, and patients could point to, share, and trust. The brand directly supported recruitment, credibility, and funding conversations.
The numbers tell the rest of the story: as of February 2024, CAPTURE ALS had recruited 65 participants living with ALS or a related disease and 22 controls — reaching the halfway mark of its recruitment milestone. A $30M research platform that needed people to show up is finding them.
The identity guide and visual system remain in active use. The brand is doing exactly what it was built to do.