The Adult Social Care sector is in crisis. Local authorities and care providers struggle to fill vacancies due to low wages and the perceived desirability of the jobs. I wanted to find a new way of talking about working in the sector, and reframe the profession around the positive stories that care workers told us.
The campaign I created is aimed at recruiting people to work with the elderly. It reframes old people as interesting people who were once really cool. I was inspired by a Paul Whitehouse quote from a Fast Show sketch, ‘Old people are just young people who have been around for a really long time’.
Many of the older adults who need care now have lived fabulous lives and have great stories to tell. Working with them can be very satisfying and enjoyable.
We selected real stories we had heard anecdotally from care workers about people they had looked after. Ultimately everyone has a great story to tell, but we selected those that worked best for the visuals.
To demonstrate this, the older adults are depicted in the clothes they might wear, if they were doing ‘their 'thing’ today.
The contrast of older people wearing the clothes of people 40 years younger makes an unusual and striking composition. The plan was to shoot the older people in a studio but that proved unworkable for a number of reasons, so we used stock shots to represent them.
We created the campaign assets in a range of formats for digital and social delivery, although we also created posters for clients who had access to those media spaces. Several care providers and local authorities signed up to use the campaign assets, including Proud To Care North London, whose branding is shown on these executions.
The campaign formed part of a wider strategy to drive social care recruitment which included video interviews with carers, descriptions of the different jobs available, ‘how to apply’ content and microsite recruitment landing pages.
