Caring Across Generations, HFC Campaign and Care-Themed Ad Win Anthem Awards
“This Is Us” Cast Conversation on Destigmatizing End-of-Life Care Reached 3.4 Million Viewers
LOS ANGELES–A groundbreaking multimedia campaign featuring NBC’s This is Us stars and leading caregiving advocates tackling dementia and caregiving stigmas is an Anthem Award winner. Caring Across Generations and Hilarity for Charity (HFC) partnered with the major network television series to produce This is Us. This is Care. A Conversation, a set of video and social content centered on personal caregiving stories and the power of pop culture to battle negative aging and illness stereotypes. This 30-minute filmed conversation between actors Mandy Moore, Chrissy Metz, and Jon Huerta; series Executive Producer KJ Steinberg; Caring Across Generations’ Executive Director Ai-jen Poo; and HFC Co-founders Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen reached an organic audience of 3.4 million across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
“We all age, get sick and need care in our lives, so let’s talk about it openly,” said Lauren Miller Rogen, who was in her early 20s when she started caring for her mother who had early onset Alzheimer’s disease. “We can’t fix something we don’t see, so sharing our care stories—on screen and off—can help us shift our culture and policies to better support our loved ones’ needs.”
More than 53 million family caregivers across the U.S. currently support aging adults and disabled loved ones. By 2050, the number of people over 65 with Alzheimer’s may grow to a projected 12.7 million, according to a 2022 Alzheimer’s Association report.
“Caregivers and care recipients in this country don’t feel valued by our society, but authentic, real care storylines like the one in This Is Us can help change that,” said Lydia Storie, associate director of culture change at Caring Across Generations who pitched the digital campaign to executives at NBCUniversal and 20th Century Fox and oversaw the joint digital distribution strategy. “We hope these two Anthem Awards illustrate both the importance and power of putting more care stories on film and TV.”
Caring Across Generations received another Anthem Award for a two-minute video advertisement created and distributed in partnership with MNI Media Strategies and Grey Group. The thought-provoking YouTube ad featured young children carrying out caregiving responsibilities: pulling their dad, who is in a wheelchair, up a set of house stairs; comforting their mom who says “this is not my home, I want to go home” before tending to a crying infant; and video calling a sibling to ask them to watch their mom.
Designed to move viewers to see care as an urgent and collective social issue rather than an individual burden that people have to bear privately, the video interspersed statistics about people who are currently, or shortly will be, unpaid caregivers. The ad was watched in completion 2.96 million times and ultimately reached 7.3 million viewers.
The Anthem Award is an initiative by The Webbys, the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, and recognizes mission-driven work from people, companies and organizations worldwide.