With Ageism Front-And-Center In The News, New Aegis Living Campaign Created By Little Hands Of Stone Challenges Notions Of Getting Old

Bold Creative Strategy Breaks Free From Senior Care Tropes To Get At Deeper Truths About Aging

Amid a Presidential election where both candidates’ age is an issue, agency Little Hands of Stone has decidedly thrown out the notion of young and old with their new “Aging Is Life” campaign for Aegis Living, the Bellevue, WA-based senior living provider with 36 communities in Washington, California, and Nevada. The new campaign breaks on May 6 and consists of TV spots (:60, :30, airing throughout the Northwest), digital online, print/OOH, as well as a particularly effective radio component featuring the powerful narration from an actual 100-year-old Aegis resident named Marie Hos.

Looking Past Category Cliches:

Look at most senior living/assisted living marketing and you’re bound to see a bundle of cliches that invariably include smiling seniors with a caregiver’s hand on their shoulder, shots of pickleball courts, and folks in cardigan sweaters drinking white wine. The new campaign injects some much-needed humanity and empathy into a category most don’t want to think about.

“Our priority for Aegis was to break through the ‘sunsets-and-pickleball’ clutter and develop a deeper emotional bond with our audience by acknowledging the wildly complicated, bittersweet realities of getting older,” Matt McCain, Co-Founder, Little Hands of Stone says. “We are all humans experiencing aging together.”

McCain notes that the vast majority of advertising in this category, with its plethora of cliches, does nothing to acknowledge the real fear and pain these families are experiencing. “Through diving deep with Aegis, and interviewing families, we learned just how terrified children of aging parents are by the prospect and responsibility of handing their vulnerable loved ones over to paid strangers,” he adds.

Aging Is Life:

To get at that core creative challenge, the “Aging Is Life” campaign was born. The main :60 TV spot begins with sparse choir music, a shot of a newborn, and large on-screen typography that simply states: “future old person.” From there, the spot progresses with an emotional montage of life’s biggest moments: from childhood to teen and graduation, to work, wedding, family, and retirement – all of these pivotal moments are adorned with the same three on-screen words: “future old person.” As the orchestrated music crescendos and the images speed up, the spot ends simply with the words, “Aging Is Life.” The words then part, almost like a welcoming door opening, revealing the Aegis Living logo.

For Little Hands of Stone Co-Founder Michael Boychuk, the campaign took on personal significance when his father became a resident following a negative experience at another memory care facility. His positive interactions with Aegis led him and the agency to reach out to the Aegis marketing team and discuss what ultimately became this campaign. 

“There is such a simple honesty in the thought that we’re all just future old people experiencing aging together,” Boychuk says. “Society tends to treat aging as an unfortunate effect of getting old. We label each other as ‘young’ or ‘middle-aged’ or ‘elderly,’ but in reality, we all begin aging the moment we’re born. Getting older is a wild, unstoppable series of joyful, beautiful, painful events that we get the privilege of experiencing for as long as we’re allowed. Any added elements on top of that core truth would only get in the way.” 

Source: Little Hands of Stone

  Advertising, Aegis Living, Ageism, Campaign, Little Hands of Stone, Marketing