How Publicis Made France Feel Parkinson's Tremors
#ShakeParkinsonsOff is a 2018 French public interest campaign created by Publicis Conseil for ICM — the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, internationally known as the Paris Brain Institute — that used haptic smartphone technology to physically simulate Parkinson's disease tremors in the hands of viewers, aiming to raise awareness and charitable donations around World Parkinson's Disease Day on 11 April 2018.
The campaign launched in France on 9 April 2018, according to Clapboard.com, with distribution across television, web, social media, and mobile. Its centrepiece is a short film following a fictional character named Tom from childhood through old age, contrasting the involuntary emotional trembling of early life — a first kiss, a moment of fear — with the relentless, uncontrollable trembling caused by Parkinson's disease in later years. The creative proposition, as documented by culture-rp.com, distils this contrast into a single declarative line: "Only our emotions should make us tremble."
In France, the campaign extended beyond passive viewing through an application of the Vibration API on compatible Android smartphones. When a viewer watched the film on a mobile device, haptic feedback reproduced the physical sensation of Parkinson's tremors directly through the handset, as reported by packshotmag.com. This mechanic transformed the screen into a tactile instrument of empathy, collapsing the distance between audience and patient. The campaign contained one primary media asset and operated under the hashtag #ShakeParkinsonsOff across social channels. Clapboard.com records the campaign as a submission from the public interest category, positioned at a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100.
ICM chose World Parkinson's Disease Day as the anchor for its 2018 campaign. That date — 11 April, the birthday of James Parkinson, who first described the condition — gives neurological charities across Europe a shared cultural moment around which to mobilise public attention, and ICM used it to maximum effect by ensuring both the television broadcast and the social campaign were live two days prior, on 9 April, according to Clapboard.com.
The strategic challenge for a neurological research institute in France is familiar to any health charity: Parkinson's disease is widely named but rarely understood by those without direct personal experience. Campaigns by comparable organisations — including those supporting research into Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis — frequently rely on statistical arguments or clinical descriptions that fail to translate the lived experience of the condition into felt urgency. Publicis Conseil's insight, as described by culture-rp.com, was that trembling carries its own emotional grammar in human life. It is the body's honest response to joy, fear, and love. By anchoring the campaign's narrative in that universal truth, the strategy made the contrast with pathological trembling immediately legible to a general French audience without requiring any medical literacy.
In France, net media advertising revenues reached €14.4 billion in 2018, up from the prior year, according to packshotmag.com's reporting on French advertising market conditions. Public interest campaigns competed within that environment for both media space and audience attention, making creative differentiation — rather than spending weight — the primary competitive variable. The haptic technology layer addressed this by creating a form of engagement that no amount of traditional media spend could replicate: physical sensation as argument.
Director James Lees helmed the film at the centre of #ShakeParkinsonsOff. Lees worked with director of photography Jackson Hunt and production company LA PAC to construct a narrative that spans a human lifetime in a compressed, emotionally precise running time, as credited by Clapboard.com and packshotmag.com.
The film's protagonist, Tom, is introduced in childhood and followed through adolescence, young adulthood, and eventually old age. Each phase is anchored in a moment of trembling — hands shaking before a confession of love, a body taut with anxiety — that the audience recognises as ordinary human vulnerability. The visual grammar is deliberately warm and intimate in these early sequences. When the film arrives at Tom's later years and the trembling becomes Parkinson's tremors, the same visual warmth persists, making the pathological intrusion into an otherwise familiar life more, not less, affecting. According to culture-rp.com, the tagline "Seules nos émotions devraient nous faire trembler" — only our emotions should make us tremble — closes the film as both an observation and an argument for research funding.
The haptic execution was engineered by creative technologists Julien Mahé and Kirgan Somville, as credited by packshotmag.com, who implemented the Vibration API to synchronise smartphone vibration with the tremor moments in the film. Global chief creative officer Bruno Bertelli and executive creative director Elie Trotignon oversaw the creative direction at Publicis Conseil, Paris, with digital creative director Pierre Coulier leading the mobile layer. Art direction and copywriting were handled by Delphine Bojago and Olivier Gamblin. Strategic planner Etienne Averseng shaped the insight framework that connected emotional trembling to pathological trembling as the campaign's conceptual spine, according to Clapboard.com. TV producer Florent Villiers managed production, with account management handled by Gaëlle Morvan and Laurent Enet.
Adweek described #ShakeParkinsonsOff as an intriguing use of mobile technology in the service of a public health cause, according to Clapboard.com's editorial documentation of the campaign's reception. That characterisation points toward the campaign's most measurable structural achievement: it created a category-distinct mechanic — haptic empathy — in a media environment where public interest campaigns in France were competing primarily on emotional storytelling alone.
No independently verified donation uplift figures or broadcast reach metrics for #ShakeParkinsonsOff are publicly available at the time of this writing. What the campaign's architecture makes structurally legible, however, is a deliberate compression of the awareness-to-action funnel. By embedding a donation prompt within the haptic mobile experience, Publicis Conseil removed the conventional step between emotional response and charitable conversion, as documented by culture-rp.com. A viewer who physically felt the tremors through their handset encountered a call to donate in the same moment as the visceral experience, rather than after a delay that typically erodes charitable intent.
The campaign earned coverage across French media and specialist advertising press at the time of its launch, as noted by packshotmag.com and ouest-france.fr, reflecting the novelty of applying the Vibration API to a fundraising context in France. Clapboard.com records a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100 for #ShakeParkinsonsOff, reflecting strong conceptual originality and technical innovation offset by the inherent reach limitation of a haptic mechanic dependent on compatible Android hardware and active mobile engagement rather than passive broadcast consumption.
#ShakeParkinsonsOff is a 2018 French public interest campaign created by Publicis Conseil for ICM, the Paris Brain Institute. Launched around World Parkinson's Disease Day on 11 April 2018, it used a short film following character Tom across a lifetime and haptic smartphone technology to physically simulate Parkinson's tremors for mobile viewers.
The campaign used the Vibration API on compatible Android smartphones. When viewers watched the film on a mobile device, the handset vibrated in synchronisation with Parkinson's tremor moments in the narrative, physically replicating the sensation. Creative technologists Julien Mahé and Kirgan Somville at Publicis Conseil engineered the implementation, according to Clapboard.com.
James Lees directed the film, working with director of photography Jackson Hunt and production company LA PAC. The campaign was overseen creatively by Bruno Bertelli as global chief creative officer and Elie Trotignon as executive creative director at Publicis Conseil, Paris, as credited by Clapboard.com and packshotmag.com.
The tagline is "Only our emotions should make us tremble." It is built on the contrast between voluntary emotional trembling — fear, excitement, love — and the involuntary tremors of Parkinson's disease. The film traces this contrast through the life of fictional character Tom, making the condition's intrusion into ordinary life tangible, according to culture-rp.com.
No independently verified donation or reach metrics are publicly available for #ShakeParkinsonsOff. Adweek recognised the campaign's innovative use of mobile technology, according to Clapboard.com. The campaign earned coverage in French specialist press, and Clapboard.com records a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual originality with limited haptic reach.
11 April is World Parkinson's Disease Day, marking the birthday of James Parkinson, who first described the condition. ICM and Publicis Conseil aligned the campaign launch to this date to maximise relevance and media attention. The first broadcast aired on 9 April 2018, two days ahead of the awareness day, according to Clapboard.com.
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