During this commercial, we see pure enjoyment on residents’ faces while doing activities they never dreamed of doing. With the COVID-19 pandemic taking over our lives, especially those living here, we wanted to take residents on an adventure of a lifetime. Some went cliff jumping, others dove under the sea, and we even had residents go white water rafting. One perk of virtual reality is leaving actual reality, and getting a mental break from the world around us, which is what we provided our residents in this ad.
With mental health issues on the rise we found, virtual reality could help address anxiety and depression by creating soothing environments and simulations. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many of our residents were separated from their loved ones depending on where they living at our facility. This played a major role in many residents’ mental states, but through this ad, we were able to spread some cheer. Our goal was to do exactly that – spread cheer and give a sense of hope to those involved.
Long term, we plan to see virtual reality implemented on our campus, so every resident gets to feel a new sense of freedom. In our community, we don’t want to put a limit on the possibilities that you can achieve, and instead what to embrace the world of possibilities. Virtual Reality can help us create a whole new world for our residents while staying in their home.
When people think about retirement homes, their image isn’t what we think it should be. We want to change the perception of retirement living and tell everyone that retirement can be fun! Yes, our residents are elderly, but they still like to do the same thing they used to do when they were younger. In this ad, you see residents cliff jumping, flying planes, and white water rafting, events they could still be doing if their bodies allowed.
We had our residents pick the scene they wanted to be in and gave them the experience they wanted. We see the residents with virtual reality glasses on, but behind them we see the scene that they picked to be in. Not a single resident picked to sit in a knitting circle, but rather picked to go sky diving, swimming with sharks, or cliff jumping. We hope that you watch this ad and your perception of an older adult is changed to something more fun. You cannot simply judge a book or place by its cover, you must immerse yourself in the pages of life to truly understand the beauty of age.
At Maple Knoll Village we have three full-time independent living social directors dedicated to making the lives of our residents more enjoyable. While COVID-19 has limited us to certain activities, we have been able to take them on bus rides through the city, make bird feeders, and complete many crossword puzzles.
This is not the ideal situation for our residents, as we see they like to live life to the extreme. Prior to COVID, we would take our residents to amusement parks, the zoo, and sporting events.
Our tagline at Maple Knoll is Live Life because we want residents to live the way they want to live. We provide every level of care from independent living to assisted living to skilled nursing. Once you move to Maple Knoll, you never have to make another move again, so we want to be sure you are living every day to the fullest.
Our residents had the opportunity to leave Maple Knoll Village and go anywhere they wanted to go, amid a pandemic, because we had a virtual reality headset. Not only did our residents like it, but we also had positive feedback. The commercial was played on local television stations and online, which reaches the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area, and since being on the air we have had calls with positive feedback and many more inquires.
This virtual reality experience gave our residents a new outlook on life. We know that entertainment has evolved a lot over the years, even more so with virtual reality, and so must retirement. There are roughly 75 million baby boomers soon to be reaching retirement age. Over the next two decades, 10,000 people per day will turn age 65. With retirement looking different to Boomers, we are working to create an environment where residents can age more independently while maintaining a worry-free lifestyle. Though we do not have virtual reality permanently on our campus yet, we saw how our residents lit up when they put on the headset, and hopefully implement something permanent soon.
