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Creative brief for developing the HippoCamera explainer video in-house
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Research paper "A smartphone intervention that enhances real-world memory..." This first scientific validation study proves the HippoCamera app’s effectiveness in a person’s everyday life.
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Toronto Star article. Health & life writer Christine Sismondo cleverly covered the trendy topic of “digital amnesia” caused by phone use and weaved in HippoCamera as a counterpoint to this, and perspectives of peers.
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Neuroscience News article. Readers have a vested interest in memory and brain health. This article directly led to an increase in HippoCamera update registrations.
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U of T News article "Smartphone app designed by U of T researchers can significantly improve memory recall" featuring embedded YouTube video and photos
Memory loss? There’s an app for that.
Category
Communications > Storytelling
Description
Best of CASE District II Award
Institution: University of Toronto
Title of entry: Memory loss? There’s an app for that.
About this entry: Morgan Barense is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto’s (U of T) Faculty of Arts & Science (A&S) and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. Using what we know about how the brain’s hippocampus supports memory and learning, she and her colleagues created a smartphone-based app called the HippoCamera that their new research study – eight years in the making – shows is significantly improving people’s memory, even for those with severe amnesia and signs of cognitive decline. The app is presently a beta version for research purposes only, with the aim of making it available to the public soon.
We developed a multi-pronged communications approach to tell a research-to-real-world story reaching key audiences, showcasing the results of the first scientific validation study that proves the neuroscience-informed app’s effectiveness in a person’s everyday life. This included an engaging, informative YouTube video explainer to demonstrate how the app works; a photography and broll package for internal and external storytelling use; a written news story for owned channels and wider distribution to targeted media and science newswire EurekAlert; and amplification by social media and partners.
Results effectively communicated the lab-to-life trajectory of the research results and garnered attention from key audiences, with over 19,000 visitors to the HippoCamera website, of which 35 per cent opted-in to receive further communications, a rate that is 10 times the average. Perhaps best summed up by Barense herself: “The coverage from U of T was absolutely game changing for us!”