Millions of senior citizens in nursing homes live in oblivion. They need our attention to sustain their will to live. But young people are just not interested in them.

Enjoyable Aging Charity Foundation briefed us to create a powerful social-focused campaign. Its main goal was to raise awareness among the younger generation about the problem of forgotten elderly people and draw attention back to them. We had to find a way to interest them and motivate them to take action – share the information about the problem, or become the fund’s volunteers and donate their time to nursing home residents, thus bringing back their will to live.

Our objectives were:

• to raise awareness of the problem (KPIs: number of campaign impressions, shares, reposts, comments);

• to increase the number of charity fund volunteers (KPIs: number of new volunteers).

Millions of senior citizens in nursing homes live in oblivion. They need our attention to sustain their will to live. But young people are not interested; they perceive elderly people in nursing homes as irrelevant, devoid of any interest, insignificant.

So we decided to tell the stories of elderly people in a way that’s relevant to young audience – by using Instagram as a medium.

“Disappearing stories” is a miniseries based on real-life tales of senior citizens, created in the format of Instagram stories. Each episode disappears after 24 hours – just like the lives of residents at nursery homes melt away without our attention.

We posted 9 episodes as separate Instagram stories. The videos carried a powerful message and invited viewers to share the stories to keep them “alive”, and further sign up as volunteers in nursing homes. Unless shared, the stories disappeared forever, just like elderly people do.

• Target audience

Young people, 18-30 years old, active on social media and open to the idea of volunteering & helping the less fortunate.

• Media planning

The core of the idea was in the transience of life and how dependent it is on other people’s interest – older people crave attention, and when they don’t get it, they gradually lose their will to live and wither away. The 24-hr life span of Instagram stories was the perfect medium to illustrate this concept.

• Approach

We posted 9 videos as separate Instagram stories, each telling a real-life tale from life of one of the senior residents of nursing homes under “Enjoyable Aging” care. The videos carried a powerful message and invited viewers to share the stories to keep them “alive”, and further sign up as volunteers in nursing homes. Unless shared, the stories disappeared forever, just like elderly people do.

Implementation:

Each episode, posted as separate Instagram stories, told a tale from the life of one of the nursing homes’ residents. To recreate these memories, we went through thorough preparation with heroes, search for complex objects, historic consultants, props, costumed extras – and filmed it in native Instagram vertical format. We took into account Instagram’s video slicing algorithm and made sure that shot by shot breakdown allowed viewers to grasp the full story even if they clicked through parts of the video.

Placement & touchpoints:

Instagram stories were the main channel, with each story linking to the project website. There we explained the problem in detail, hosted the videos, and invited users to take action: spread the word by sharing videos – or sign up to volunteer for the foundation.

Timeline & scale:

4 months for development and production

1 month for promotion

Nationwide scale

Production details:

One of the key challenges we faced was filming the series in the Instagram stories native format. We went through thorough preparation, research with real-life heroes, a careful search for complex objects, historic consultants, tanks, props, costumed extras, pyrotechnics – and then filmed all of this in a vertical format. We rotated the camera and playback by 90 degrees. The vertical composition was built based on classic art and interior frames (windows, doors). For location shooting, we used hilly terrain and forests. To preserve the feel of spatial perspective and unity of time we used the technique of intraframe editing and long passages. Live camera emphasized the documentary status of the story. We also took into account the flexible algorithm of video breakdown in Instagram such that editing cuts happened during the transition from one story to the next.

• Business results:

+600% or 7x increase in new “Enjoyable Aging Charity Foundation" volunteers

• Outcomes/awareness:

- 12.5 million video views, out of which 80% watched episodes till the end

- reached 38.5 million users

- 50 celebrity shares