The ad that trivialises tragedy.

If you’ve ever walked with someone as they descended into dementia, you know it is one of the most gut-wrenching, anguishing things that can happen. We should all fervently hope and pray for treatments and a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

And that’s clearly what the Alzheimer Society of Montréal wants too. But you can't really tell from this stupid ad:

Here’s a detail, so you can see the ‘punch line’:

Alzheimer’s almost hits the category of ‘too scary to talk about’. And that might lead people to reach for metaphors and analogies to talk about the disease and what it does.

But this computer hard drive analogy is inept. Not only that, it’s glib and dehumanising. Roger, even if he’s in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, is not a blank hard drive. He’s still a human being.

Worse still, comparing the deep human tragedy of Alzheimer’s with the minor problem of a broken hard drive just pushes everyone further from understanding and caring about this disease. Losing a hard drive is a pain – possibly a huge pain. But it can’t even come close to comparing to the heartbreak, fear and pain of Alzheimer’s.

What someone should have asked is: What are we trying to accomplish? What action or attitude do we hope to engender with this message? It appears nobody asked that, so they ended up with a pointless and misleading analogy that trivialises the very thing the organisation is dedicated to fighting.

As you might expect, this is the work of an ad agency.

Thanks to Osocio for the tip.