In spite of the fact that Spain is the second country in the world with the highest life expectancy and that more than two million older people live in unwanted loneliness, society and media only pay attention to the issue when it’s too late and an older person turns up dead after days, months or years of abandonment. Judges, firefighters and coroners have said that, unfortunately, this phenomenon is becoming more frequent and that in many cases their deaths could have been avoided with the proper care and attention.

In light of this harsh reality, we decided to confront society with the problem and do it as head-on as possible. The only thing that could catch our attention: “The last person to die in loneliness”. A hyperrealistic sculpture that could ignite social debate and demonstrate that, sometimes, we don’t have to wait for things to happen before.

With the intention of generating media and social conversation about this issue, we divided the strategy in two phases with two complementary messages:

First, we decided to catch the public’s attention with the only thing that would alarm them: to pronounce a woman as dead in loneliness, and portray it through a hyperrealistic sculpture so that people could literally face the issue.

Once we had caught the public and the media’s attention (several media outlets covered the news of the installation live), we revealed the true message: “The worst part of loneliness is not death, but life waiting for it to happen”.

We revealed the message in a media presentation with Mercedes by our side. She is the woman who lives in loneliness after whom the sculpture was modeled, and she helped us launch the message: The worst part about loneliness is not the end, is everything that happens before