2002 > DIAKONISCHES WERK IM KIRCHENKREIS NIEDERBERG // GERMANY
ZEIT ZUM LEBEN TIME TO LIVE
DANIELA HÖHMAN, ARNE SCHEUERMANN AND SILKE KAMMANN Diakonie Niederberg is a local welfare organisation affiliated to the Protestant church in the Rhineland. It offers various services: social assistance for adolescents and families, help to the homeless, domestic care, debt advice, addiction advice, etc. ‘Our quiet campaign aimed to encourage older people and their families to seek help to ameliorate their everyday lives,’ explains designer Daniela Hohmann. ‘That is the reason we chose not to show ‘active seniors’ engaging in ‘noisy activities’ as seen on television these days, but instead human beings who accept their weaknesses. They self-consciously ask for help and thus improve their quality of life’. The visuals show photographs of older people and their families in their real environment. They are seen at home, in their living room, in the kitchen, listening to music or walking outdoors. They are seen giving and receiving affection
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and enjoying life. All the models featured in these ads could be patients/clients of Diakonie Niederberg. The text informs us about the organisation behind the smiles and quality time older people enjoy. The headlines feature witticisms which are difficult to translate but which comment on Diakonie’s efforts in a humorous manner. One of the pictures, for example, clarifies what Diakonie’s ‘sports programme’ entails: having enough time to ‘study’ soccer news attentively in a well-known German sports newspaper. The campaign aimed to replace Diakonie’s old image as a pure healthcare service and present its new and extended service; Diakonie assists you so that you can have time for yourself and your own life. Daniela Hohmann and her colleagues met at university. Their agency specialises in corporate and social advertising. They have often experienced the fact that clients from social organisations are won over by courageous and innovative designs. Daniela Hohmann concludes, ‘These clients challenge us with difficult but rewarding assignments. The fact that they appreciate advertising and design reassures us in our claim to produce sensible, that is to say, reasonable and affordable design’. Campaign material Advertisements, billboards, booklets, postcards, posters