ALS Canada – The Time is Now
The Challenge
In June 2020, ALS Canada published a landmark position paper calling for policy change to ensure timely, equitable, and affordable access to Health Canada approved therapies for people living with ALS. The science was ready. The community was ready. What the organization needed was a campaign that could turn that momentum into meaningful political action.
The timing was complicated. Canada was in the middle of a pandemic. Ontario was under a province-wide stay-at-home order. Traditional campaign production wasn’t possible — no studios, no in-person shoots, no gathering of any kind.
The question wasn’t whether to build the campaign. It was how.
Visual Showcase
My Role
As ALS Canada’s client-side marketing lead, I was responsible for campaign strategy alignment, stakeholder management across the communications and advocacy teams, and community outreach. I worked in close partnership with digital agency Principles, serving as the bridge between internal teams and the agency; ensuring the campaign reflected both the organization’s advocacy objectives and the voices of the community it exists to serve.
Community participation was central to the campaign from the start. I personally led outreach to identify and invite individuals living with ALS and family members who had lost loved ones to the disease; people who were already outspoken advocates for the cause and willing to share their stories publicly.
The
Approach
With in-person production off the table, Principles and I leaned into the only option available: Zoom.
What could have been a compromise became a creative decision. Once community participants were confirmed, we set up individual Zoom sessions and coached each person on how to position their laptop to ensure well-composed framing. The final images weren’t shot with a camera; they were screen captures of what we saw on the call.
The grain that comes with a video call screenshot isn’t a flaw. It’s texture. It’s immediacy. It’s the visual equivalent of someone speaking directly to you rather than performing for a lens. The rawness of the imagery was something a polished, in-person shoot couldn’t have replicated, and it was exactly right for a campaign asking Canadians to look directly at the human cost of delayed access to life-extending therapies.
There was another dimension to this approach that mattered: some participants would not have been able to join an in-person shoot at all due to mobility limitations. The pandemic’s constraints accidentally created the most accessible production format possible.
The campaign featured individuals living with ALS alongside family members who had lost loved ones, a deliberate range of perspectives that reflected the full breadth of who ALS affects and who fights for change.
Community storytelling anchored the creative across every channel, with a clear call to action: contact your elected official and demand better.
The Outcome
Launched on Global ALS Awareness Day, June 21, 2020, the campaign mobilized the ALS community at a scale the organization had never seen before.
By November 2021, more than 7,000 people had written to their elected officials calling for timely, equitable, and affordable access to Health Canada approved ALS therapies; making this the most successful eAdvocacy campaign in ALS Canada’s digital history.
That result didn’t come from a polished production budget or ideal circumstances. It came from meeting the community where they were, telling their stories honestly, and giving supporters a clear and meaningful way to act.
Ready to talk about what community-driven marketing could look like for your organization?