The idea “A stroke can happen at any time - even in a commercial break” turned well-known commercials for various Norwegian brands, into commercials for the NAA. The commercials started out as people had come to known them, but in our films, actors or film crew suddenly suffered a stroke, giving them an unexpected twist.

In this particular film, seemingly a commercial for Norwegian newspaper Afteposten, the cameraman all of a sudden suffers from a stroke. The production comes to an abrupt halt as actors and other crewmembers rushes to help him. A voice-over addresses the surprise nature of strokes, and the importance of quick first aid response if a stroke should occur.

The campaign is based on giving well-known commercial for other brands a surprising twist. All three we got to play around with, had all aired heavily on TV so that the audience were familiar with them. In our versions of the commercials, the actors, sound guy and camera-man respectively suffered from a sudden stroke, bringing the production to an abrupt halt as crewmembers rushed to help.

The series of stroke version-commercials turned out to be a win-win situation: Brands got positive PR by supporting an important cause, and the NAA were able to run TV-commercials. Proving that a stroke can happen at any time in a surprising way, the idea generated a landslide of new members for the NAA.

In the campaign period the NAA Website experienced an increase in page visits of 271%, generating what the NAA called “a significant amount of new members”.

As the NAA have a company policy of not sharing information concerning their member statistics, we are unfortunately unable to provide any concrete numbers.