Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have helped generations of older Americans stay out of poverty and live with dignity after a lifetime of hard work. Today, more than 69 million people rely on Social Security, while Medicaid provides essential health coverage to more than 17 million adults age 50 and older with limited incomes, many of whom also depend on Medicare.
As we approached the 90th anniversary of Social Security in August 2025, concerns about the future of Social Security and potential changes to Medicare and Medicaid loomed large for many older Americans and their families. In response, AARP set out to amplify the voices of older adults, while reinforcing our long-standing role as a champion and defender of these vital programs.
Our goal was to elevate the voices and concerns of everyday Americans, while building urgency and mobilizing support to protect Social Security and defend Medicaid and SNAP, which millions of older adults rely on.
This storytelling campaign was built around a community-centered strategy designed to make a complex policy conversation feel personal, immediate and shareable – earning attention in fast-scrolling and crowded feeds. Instead of leading with institutions or statistics, we led with people – featuring authentic first-person perspectives from AARP advocates and community members.
We deployed a coordinated, multi-channel content strategy featuring stories from Americans 50-plus from across the country, powered by close collaboration between our Advocacy, Editorial, Social, and Studios teams for two waves of storytelling to shine a light on the real-world importance of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The first wave featured written profiles paired with striking portrait photography and video interviews highlighting the impact that cuts or changes to these critical programs would have on older adults. These stories were repackaged for use on social media, combining the powerful imagery with compelling quotes from the web features.
As we neared the milestone 90th anniversary, a second wave of storytelling became a key feature of our national campaign spotlighting AARP's efforts to protect Social Security for Americans today and for generations to come. The Campaigns-Digital-Storytelling team assembled a group of advocate-storytellers to be featured in AARP’s national consumer campaign, and these stories were re-envisioned for social channels using portrait photography and impactful quotes, as well as short-form video clips.
The feature stories, quote cards and video assets were shared across AARP’s flagship and AARP Advocates social media channels.
We anchored our execution in authenticity: placing the storyteller at the center of the narrative so audiences connected with the “why” before we introduced the “what”. This approach helped translate complex policy into accessible, engaging content, avoiding jargon in favor of everyday language that reflected real-life experiences. Each story was presented in a way that moved audiences from connection (a human moment) to clarity (what’s at stake), to participation (a clear next step).
Together, these choices created an effective storytelling engine that amplified the voices of our community members, communicated the urgency of the moment and strengthened confidence in AARP’s advocacy leadership. The execution felt human and accessible on our website and in our social feeds – connecting first-person storytelling to advocacy in a way audiences could understand, connect with, share, and act on.
By centering first-person stories from AARP community members, our storytelling campaign humanized complex policy issues, focusing on real stories from real people, yielding strong results. The top-performing social media graphic ranked in the top 10 of AARP’s highest-performing social posts across all 2025. While Advocacy-driven content often performs well on our social channels, this series drove particularly strong increases in overall content performance, generating 64% of engagements and 56% of total reach among all 2025 Advocacy content.
With diverse perspectives from across the United States, we were able to successfully position these issues as personal – not political. Further, in an especially volatile and partisan climate, the sentiment was significantly positive, driving a more than 100% increase in positive comments on these topics year-over-year 2025-2024.
In total, the storytelling series reached 1.44 million people and generated:
Engagements: 341,000
8,500 comments
16,250 shares
Video Views: 883,000
Unique Visitors: 147,000
