After 62 years of business and 18 years on Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” list, Aflac faced a reputational deficit capable of hurting financial performance. A 2017 Reputation Institute survey revealed that consumers found Aflac lacking in its CSR efforts – a real threat to an insurance business built on reputation and trust.

Most people were unaware of Aflac’s 23-year, $123 million commitment to childhood cancer causes. Consumers didn’t understand Aflac’s business or know it was a pioneer in cancer insurance – even though 38% of Americans face cancer in their lifetimes.

True to the company’s values, Aflac sought collaborative partners to advance objectives:

- Engage multiple audiences, including consumers, employees and sales agents;

- Enhance Aflac’s reputation;

- Associate the brand with being caring and innovative;

- Measurably support children facing cancer; and

- Position Aflac as a leading voice in a national conversation building support for the under-funded cause.

Together, they realized a truly innovative strategy would be required to break through – an approach that was tangible, ownable, brand-aligned, emotional, scalable and relevant nationwide. It was an opportunity to simultaneously elevate Aflac’s reputation, awareness and financial goals while evolving its long-term commitment to the childhood cancer cause.

Aflac engaged a leading social impact consultancy to rethink its philanthropy strategy. Extensive executive interviews set clear criteria. Market research revealed consumer insights. Dozens of interviews with pediatric cancer experts and deep literature review surfaced patients’ unmet need for emotional support.

Aflac’s CEO wished their famous brand icon symbolized the company’s philanthropy. The team pivoted toward a “caring innovator” brand archetype. This inspired the team’s breakthrough moment, when the social impact firm conceptualized My Special Aflac Duck(TM), a social robot modeled on Aflac’s brand icon. The concept met Aflac’s criteria: tangible, ownable, emotional, scalable, impactful and relevant nationwide.

To develop the idea, Aflac and its agency engaged a creative R&D workshop, meeting weekly as a joint team over two years. They first created the Aflac Childhood Cancer Campaign(SM), an awareness, advocacy and fundraising program. They spoke with childhood cancer patients and experts to create patient journey maps. Their 18-month, user-centered design process at a top U.S. hospital involved ethnographic research with 85+ patients, families and medical professionals to inform all features and functionality.

The process challenged almost every assumption the team held, resulting in a product purpose-built to meet children’s emotional needs at every stage of their cancer treatment journey.

Together, Aflac, its social impact agency, the R&D firm and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta – a top pediatric cancer hospital in the U.S. – brought My Special Aflac Duck from concept to companion.

Childhood cancer patients face an average of 1,000 days of treatment – and lasting physical and emotional impacts. Studies show play is invaluable for seriously ill children, who need more than medicine to cope with cancer.

My Special Aflac Duck, a robotic companion designed to bring comfort and joy to children facing cancer, addresses this need by fostering nurturing play and communication: users feed, bathe, administer treatments to, and calm their duck. The duck features lifelike movement (nuzzling, breathing, moving to music), emotions (tap emoji cards and the robot expresses the feeling), medical accessories and a mixed-reality app.

More than 15,000 children are diagnosed with cancer each year; as of Q1 2019, 3,100 children in 143 hospitals in 44 states have received My Special Aflac Duck, exceeding Aflac’s Q4 distribution goal by 25%, and already exceeding its Q1 2019 goals.

In Aflac-commissioned, hospital-led research, 69% of patients reported reduced stress after using the duck, and 82% of parents recommend it to others. Independent studies show the way a child copes with cancer can impact chronic stress, which can complicate cancer; communication about the illness relates to better outcomes.

My Special Aflac Duck has won 27 awards and gained more than 2 billion earned media impressions in just five days, overachieving all targets. This campaign helped drive a three-point increase in Aflac’s Reputation Institute scores, correlating with increases in trust and purchase intent, and contributing to a 2018 total new sales increase of 3.2%.

While adult cancers are freely discussed in the U.S., experts confirm it is challenging to focus public attention on childhood cancers, which are particularly difficult to face. Perhaps as a result, pediatric cancer receives only 4 percent of U.S. government cancer research funds – although research into cures for adult cancers won’t work for kids. Part of Aflac’s goal and challenge with this campaign was to find a positive, creative way to focus attention on the childhood cancer cause.

Aflac is a U.S.-based supplemental insurance company, covering 50 million people worldwide. When a policyholder gets sick or injured, Aflac pays cash benefits, often in one day for eligible claims, directly to the insured to use for anything they need, from paying the rent to taking a taxi to the doctor. Aflac is a pioneer in cancer insurance policies, and known for its popular brand icon – a duck that quacks,