Entry Category
Program entry Overall Social Marketing
Name of Intervention/ Program
Know Early | Live Better — statewide brain health campaign
Background and Situation Analysis
It’s not a problem when you forget where you put your keys. It’s a problem when you put your keys in the freezer. That’s the moment “Know Early | Live Better” was built for: the point where ordinary forgetfulness crosses into something worth a doctor’s visit, and where most people, and most providers, still hesitate to say so out loud.
Formative research surfaced a barrier as much about belief as behavior: ‘Why do I want to know early? I can’t do anything about it.’ That fatalism isn’t accurate. Simple lifestyle changes can help manage or delay some symptoms. But it was widely held by residents and providers alike, and it stood in the way of exactly the outcomes early detection makes possible. Early detection of dementia and cognitive decline dramatically improves outcomes and planning options for patients and families, yet the conversation rarely happens early enough. Three mutually reinforcing barriers stood in the way: residents avoided raising brain health with providers out of stigma and fear; providers, working within short, competing-priority clinical encounters, did not consistently initiate the conversation either; and both sides often assumed, wrongly, that knowing early wouldn’t change anything. It takes two people to have a conversation neither one wants to start, especially when neither believes it would matter.
On behalf of a state in the Northeast US, we developed “Know Early | Live Better,” under the tagline “Brain Health. Let’s talk about it.” The program ran two coordinated, sequenced campaigns: a healthcare provider campaign, soft-launched in January 2025 to build a base of prepared clinicians, and a public campaign for residents, launched February 3 to encourage residents to use state brain health resources and raise the topic with their own providers.
PRODUCT – Early, low-stigma conversations about brain health and dementia detection, initiated by either provider or patient, alongside adoption of everyday behaviors known to help protect brain health.
PRICE – The psychological cost of raising a stigmatized, fear-laden topic for residents; the financial cost of a doctor or specialist visit; and for providers, the time cost of an additional conversation inside an already constrained visit.
PLACE – Primary care encounters and everyday touchpoints where decisions for healthy behavior occur.
PROMOTION – The “Know Early | Live Better” brand, built around a tagline meant to normalize the topic (“Brain Health. Let’s talk about it.”), paired with testimonial-driven creative (Kerry’s Story, Leah’s Story, Joe’s Story) and messaging tested for stigma-sensitivity before launch. Campaign was promoted across broadcast and streaming television, streaming and public radio, print, transit, and digital/social channels statewide, in English and Spanish.
PUBLICS – Primary: residents statewide, particularly adults with aging family members or approaching an age where cognitive changes become more noticeable. Secondary: primary care and specialty healthcare providers statewide.
PARTNERS – Critical for addressing trust issues, included: New Futures, New Hampshire Medical Society, the Alzheimer’s Association MA/NH Chapter, Easterseals NH, VT & Farnum, geriatric psychiatrists at Dartmouth Health, and the NHDHHS Chief Medical Officer’s office, each activated for message dissemination through their own trusted channels.
Priority Audiences(s)
Primary: New Hampshire residents statewide, with particular focus on those at higher risk for dementia — adults with aging parents, residents approaching an age where cognitive changes become noticeable, and those with a family history of dementia. Secondary: primary care and specialty healthcare providers statewide, serving as both a direct audience and a channel to reach residents through clinical encounters. The two audiences were sequenced deliberately: the provider campaign launched first, in January, so providers were prepared before public messaging encouraged residents to raise the topic in February.
Behavioral Objectives
For residents: increase intention to proactively raise brain health concerns or screening with a healthcare provider; reduce the proportion of residents who report they would feel embarrassed or ashamed to be tested for brain health issues; increase awareness of brain health as a topic that can and should be discussed early, not only after symptoms become severe; and increase awareness of everyday, modifiable factors, including social engagement, physical activity, sleep, mental health, and substance use, that residents can act on to help protect their own brain health.
For providers: increase the proportion of routine visits in which providers proactively raise brain health or screening with patients, particularly older patients or those with risk factors; increase provider comfort and preparedness to have this conversation within a standard visit, supported by trifold brochures, digital resources, and academic detailing distribution.
Across both audiences, the underlying objective was to close a mutual-avoidance gap: to move brain health from a topic neither party initiates to one either party feels equipped to raise, with the provider-side campaign intentionally front-loaded so the healthcare system was ready before public demand increased.
Description of Strategy/Intervention
The program began with formative research, completed alongside the formation of an Advisory Group of clinical and aging-services stakeholders. That same commitment to authentic voice carried into the Ambassador Group co-creation sessions, where one Ambassador’s own words captured what the campaign needed better than any brief could: ‘The face of Alzheimer’s is me. And it’s not my end. It’s the beginning of a different journey. I have a lot of good and happy life left. There’s joy and it’s precious.’ That language directly shaped the campaign’s creative. A pre-campaign knowledge, attitudes, awareness and beliefs (KABB) survey established baseline measures across both target audiences, giving the team a quantitative starting point for every objective listed above rather than relying on assumption.
Creative concept development leaned heavily on co-creation with three Ambassador Groups. Ambassadors suggested ideas and reviewed and gave direct feedback on tone, clarity, and stigma-sensitivity. Messaging was refined based on that feedback, and testimonial-driven creative ultimately anchored the public campaign: Kerry’s Story, Leah’s Story, and Joe’s Story, each built around a real resident’s experience with brain health and cognitive change.
The strategic sequencing was deliberate. We soft-launched provider materials first, giving the healthcare system a head start. Once providers had a base level of preparedness, the public campaign launched so that residents encouraged to raise the topic with their doctor were met with providers who were already primed for that conversation.
Both campaigns ran a full media mix suited to their audience. The public campaign used a substantial and varied creative library beyond the testimonial videos: English and Spanish posters in multiple sizes, bus king and interior transit ads across multiple cities, half-page and quarter-page print ads, a self-assessment quiz digital ad (“How often do you engage in social activities…”), and a wide range of static and animated digital ad sizes. The provider campaign’s materials were narrower and more clinical by design: a :30 provider video, a trifold brochure, an email series, and digital ads across six standard sizes built around the message “Why Diagnose Dementia Early?”
Outreach and dissemination ran in parallel with paid media, activating partners for message amplification through channels media buys alone couldn’t reach. Activations included newsletters, conferences, print materials and messaging distributed through academic detailing staff, embedding the campaign directly into existing trusted clinical channels.
The program closed with a post-campaign KABB survey, measured against the same baseline questions as the pre-campaign survey, so every reported result below reflects genuine pre/post comparison rather than a post-only snapshot.
KEY MESSAGES
Perceived Benefits: Better outcomes, more planning time, and more control, illustrated through testimonial stories (“Joe is still Joe”). A second, parallel benefit: brain health can be actively protected through everyday choices around social engagement, activity, sleep, and mental health.
Perceived Barriers: Directly named the fear and embarrassment that keep both residents and providers from raising the topic, reframing the conversation as a normal, expected part of healthcare rather than an alarming one.
Perceived Susceptibility: Messaging emphasized that brain health affects everyone as they age, not only those with a family history or visible symptoms, using relatable testimonial subjects rather than clinical abstraction.
Perceived Severity: Balanced factual framing about dementia’s impact with hope-forward testimonial storytelling, avoiding fear-based messaging that formative research suggested would backfire on an already stigma-sensitive topic.
Self-Efficacy: The same testimonials that illustrated better outcomes elsewhere in this campaign did double duty here: watching a real resident navigate that first conversation and come out the other side made the conversation feel achievable, not just worthwhile. Messaging also reinforced a second, related belief: that engaging in the everyday protective behaviors named in Perceived Benefits would actually improve brain health outcomes, not simply feel like a good habit in the abstract, giving residents a reason to expect their own effort would pay off.
Cues to Action: Provider-facing brochures and digital resources gave clinicians a scripted, low-friction way to raise the topic, while public-facing ads across transit, print, and digital consistently pointed to a single resource hub.
COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Skill Building: The self-assessment quiz, provider office posters and brochure both functioned as practical tools, giving each audience a concrete next step rather than awareness alone.
Behavior Modeling: Testimonial videos (Kerry’s Story, Leah’s Story, Joe’s Story) modeled real residents having the conversation and living well afterward, giving both audiences a template for what the desired behavior actually looks like.
Positive Reinforcement: Messaging consistently paired early action with positive, hope-forward outcomes (“Live Better”) rather than fear of decline, reinforced across every touchpoint from testimonial video to transit ad.
Implementation
The provider campaign soft-launched in January 2025. It ran through June 11, when the fifth and final email in the provider series was sent. The public campaign launched February 3 and ran through May 31, a four-month flight that gave the creative library time to rotate across channels without audience fatigue.
Provider-facing media used Google Search Targeting, Facebook and Instagram, location-based video, audience-based display ads, and the five-part email series, all built around the “Why Diagnose Dementia Early?” message and six standard digital ad sizes. Facebook and Instagram over-delivered impressions and achieved a 6.4% reach, above average for the category; the email series averaged a 16% engagement rate; and Google Search Targeting achieved roughly double the category-average click-through rate of 11%. Academic detailing staff distributed provider materials directly through the state Chief Medical Officer’s office, embedding the campaign in an existing clinical trust channel rather than relying on paid media alone.
Public-facing media used broadcast and streaming television, streaming and public radio, Google Search Targeting, Facebook and Instagram, location-based video, audience-based display, print, and bus advertising, reaching residents across every state zip code. Facebook and Instagram again over-delivered, with an 8.8% reach, and Google Search Targeting achieved roughly four times the category-average click-through rate of 21.91%. Out-of-home placements included bus king and interior ads across the three largest cities in the state, alongside print ads and half-page ads carrying testimonial imagery (Hug, iPad Selfie, Exercise Bike, Salad Prep, Joe Smiling) and the “Joe is still Joe” and “The Face of Alzheimer’s is me” executions.
The full creative library included testimonial videos in broadcast, web, and vertical formats for Kerry’s Story, Leah’s Story, and Joe’s Story; English and Spanish radio spots; English and Spanish posters in two sizes; a self-assessment quiz digital ad; a full suite of static and animated digital ads across nine standard sizes; web page graphics; an electronic resource list; and dozens of social media graphics and posts, giving partners and the client flexibility to deploy assets across whichever channel best fit a given moment or partner request.
Both campaigns significantly over-delivered against media estimates. The provider campaign delivered four times its projected impressions, totaling 6,234,700. The public campaign over-delivered its estimate by 2,479,920 impressions. Both sets of ads linked to dedicated resource pages, one for the general public and a separate provider-specific resource page, keeping the call to action consistent across every channel and audience.
Outreach and partner activation ran throughout the flight rather than as a single push: New Futures, the New Hampshire Medical Society, the Alzheimer’s Association MA/NH Chapter, Easterseals NH VT & Farnum, and Dartmouth Health’s geriatric psychiatry group each distributed materials through their own newsletters, events, or communications on an ongoing basis, extending the campaign’s reach into trusted community and clinical channels that paid media couldn’t access directly.
The engagement closed with post-campaign data collection and filtering, a final round of reporting (survey report, media report, and final campaign report), and the last provider email blast.
Ambassadors extended the program’s reach well beyond the paid media plan: several spoke with journalists and gave testimony to state legislators, carrying the campaign’s message into public conversation and policy discussions no media buy could reach on its own. Their willingness to share deeply personal stories, in co-creation and beyond, is what made this campaign’s messaging authentic and meaningful to others.
Evaluation Methods and Results
Evaluation used matched pre- and post-campaign KABB (knowledge, attitudes, awareness, and beliefs) surveys, giving every reported result a baseline comparison. The pre-campaign survey was fielded before creative launch; the post-campaign survey fielded May 26 through June 20, 2025, immediately following the media flight.
Results were strong on awareness, interest, and stigma reduction. Public interest in brain health screening rose to 84%, up from nearly two-thirds pre-campaign. Awareness increased across every brain health factor measured, with particularly strong gains in recognition of social engagement (92%, up from 69.23%), physical activity (86%, up from 56.56%), sleep (82%, up from 59.73%), depression (88%, up from 53.85%), and substance use (84%, up from 51.58%), though awareness gaps remained for less-recognized factors like obesity and blood pressure. Most notably, the share of residents who said they would feel embarrassed or ashamed to be tested for brain health issues dropped from 38.91% pre-campaign to 16% post-campaign — meaning more than half of the people who once said shame would hold them back no longer feel that way, a substantial reduction in the exact stigma the campaign was built to address.
One negative finding matters as much as the positive results: the post-campaign survey also showed significantly fewer respondents reporting that a provider had proactively raised dementia screening with them, and significantly more respondents reporting they had not been screened at all, compared to the pre-campaign baseline. The public showed up ready for the conversation; the exam room didn’t consistently meet them there. Awareness, interest, and stigma reduction moved in the right direction; provider-initiated conversation and actual screening did not follow at the same pace. We see this as a meaningful, actionable gap rather than a result to minimize: it suggests that public-facing readiness outpaced clinical follow-through, and that a program built to close a mutual-avoidance gap succeeded more fully on the public side than the provider side within this flight. This finding is shaping our thinking for a next phase: rather than relying on provider memory alone, tools like an EHR-integrated prompt for at-risk patients or a brief pre-visit intake question could initiate the conversation before the provider ever enters the room, while text-message reminders prompting residents to schedule a screening could carry that readiness through to an actual appointment, rather than depending on the clinical encounter alone to convert it. These are the questions our social marketing program is built to keep answering as it continues.
Media performance supported the behavioral evaluation: both campaigns substantially over-delivered impressions (four times estimate for providers; nearly 2.5 million impressions over estimate for the public), Facebook and Instagram out-performed category-average reach for both audiences, and Google Search Targeting achieved two to four times average click-through rates, indicating that reach and engagement were not limiting factors in the results obtained. The gap between attitudinal change and provider-initiated action points instead toward the clinical encounter itself, and toward provider-side capacity and prompts, as the area most in need of continued investment in any future phase of this work.
Entry Number: 17