“The Power of Movement” is Canada’s largest yoga fundraiser (slated for March 2), but agency Lowe Roche wanted to bring meaning to the name. Not everyone understands how yoga and arthritis are linked. They wanted to show that doing yoga not only raises money for arthritis, but actually brings increased movement to arthritis sufferers as well.
In this print and TV campaign, Lowe Roche demonstrates yoga’s dual benefits by creating shapes of the human bone system using influential Canadian yoga instructors and dancers. Simply by doing yoga, we could “see” parts of the body regaining the power of movement. Shin Sugino of Sugino Studios directed the PSA.
For Lowe Roche creative director Jane Murray, this is an important cause. “When the client Sabrina Young contacted me (she is a Facebook friend of a friend), she asked me: ‘I know you are a creative director. Do you know of any advertising agencies that might want to work for the Arthritis Research Foundation, pro bono?’ Even though we were Facebook friends, She had no idea that I had a rare type of arthritis, called Ankylosing Spondylitis. Over time, it causes your spine to fuse. Yep, literally fuse. But luckily, it does not cause your brain to fuse. Thankfully, my brain works better than ever. In fact, only a week before Sabrina contacted me, I said to my partner, ‘I wish I could do something creatively great for arthritis.’
“So, of course, I told Sabrina I would do it. It would be my honor–and also my challenge–to make a campaign so moving, and so interesting, and so beautiful, that it would encourage others to join this cause. My co-creative director Mark Mason and I set to work on it. This would be our pet project.”
