AMV BBDO aims to Rebuild Lives for The Stroke Association

AMV BBDO’s new campaign for the Stroke Association tells the stories of stroke survivors through beautiful, dynamic and intriguing works of art.

Directed by stroke survivor Lotje Sodderland (the filmmaker behind Netflix documentary My Beautiful Broken Brain), the 60-second spot, Rebuilding Lives, sees Alisha, Max, Luna, Baz, Erin and Paul recount their traumatic experiences and subsequent journeys to recovery, accompanied by individually crafted visuals inspired by their unique narratives. 

“Although it is exhilarating to have survived a life-threatening condition, the recovery period is very slow and learning to live with your new brain can be devastating," says Sodderland. "To reach the period of acceptance takes a long time, so finding new ways to communicate and express ourselves is absolutely key. We wanted to work with a wide range of artists in diverse mediums to reflect the profoundly personal nature of neural recovery and worked closely with each survivor to assign the right artist to her or his experience. Each survivor has a unique story and we really wanted to embody that diversity in the campaign - because in my experience this is one of the challenges for the medical world to tackle; how to help stroke survivors regain their selfhood when they don’t know who the person was before, or who they might turn out to be, especially when she or he may have lost the ability to communicate? So it was very important to me to get a broad, rich range of creative expressions that would convey the subjective nature of human consciousness."