Radical Empathy Wins a National ADDY
Michael Boychuk here to announce that our "AGING IS LIFE" campaign for Aegis Living was awarded a National ADDY. Working on the campaign was an intensely personal experience for me – as we were developing the strategy, I was moving my father into assisted living and he passed soon after the campaign launched.
The Challenge
No one wants to think about getting old. So, how do we motivate people to engage in a topic they actively avoid? The “old folks home” is where we park loved ones for their last few years. The “AGING IS LIFE” campaign celebrates aging as one of life’s few shared experiences that begins the moment we’re born.
Three Things We Did to Break Through
- Found the Radical Empathy We all begin aging the moment we're born. Once we accept this, we can replace pity and dread with empathy and respect.
- Ditched the Clichés Nobody buys that you're moving to assisted living to play pickleball. These sanitized portrayals only build distrust when everyone knows the real emotions involved.
- Reframed the Scary Instead of avoiding the reality of aging, we repositioned it. With all its ups and downs, joy and pain, aging is truly a gift and one of life's few shared experiences.
The campaign didn’t just advertise a service. It dug into a cultural conversation about aging, and it proved that emotion works, but only when it’s real.
