The idea driving our work was to help the nearly 48 million unpaid family caregivers in the U.S. feel seen and supported. Our goal was to collaborate with popular comedian Jesus Trejo and share his first-person perspective about the challenges of caring for aging loved ones. In the video, Trejo shares his personal journey and insights on caring for his older Spanish-speaking parents while trying to build his career in comedy. We wanted Trejo’s testimonial about his own caregiving experiences to provide valuable advice and encouragement to other caregivers around the U.S. In particular, we wanted to highlight the challenges faced by Hispanic caregivers who often serve as both translators and advocates for their loved ones.
We also set out to use this long form video as an entry point for people to learn about and sign up for AARP’s live Caregiving Town Hall event “Care to Laugh: Juggling Caregiving With Humor and Help,” which featured Trejo as host and keynote performer. The event aimed to convene family caregivers, allies of family caregivers, influencers, and trusted thought leaders to discuss the challenges that family caregivers face. The video was meant to help us elevate the needs and voices of family caregivers and connect them to each other for support through AARP’s digital and social communities.
We brought this project to life by interviewing Trejo and creating a plan of action to synthesize the key points of his caregiving story into a few areas of focus that aligned with our town hall event: the social/emotional impact on caregivers, career impact, and healthcare navigation issues.
We executed the plan by filming his interview as a direct-to-camera first person story in order to enhance the intimacy and closeness of what Trejo was discussing. We also carefully interspersed footage of his caregiving duties and stand-up comedy to show how he infuses real life experiences into his work.
One challenge was how to incorporate the recent death of Trejo’s mother into the story with care and sensitivity. We asked Trejo in advance if he would be comfortable talking about it and made sure to broach the subject respectfully. Trejo was able to speak about the heart wrenching subject with eloquence and touch on an unfortunate reality for so many people in his shoes.
In order to tie Trejo’s personal caregiving story into the universal issues of caregiving, we researched and included a key statistic via text on screen about how more than 60% of family caregivers believe that caregiving has increased their stress and worry. We built upon the emotional impact of Trejo’s story by strategically placing the statistic within the video to underscore to viewers that they are not alone.
To amplify the reach of this video, we utilized the Facebook collaboration tool to cross-post with Trejo’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram so we could tap into both our AARP audience and his audience as a professional stand-up comedian.
We used this video to direct people to AARP’s national Caregiving Town Hall event where Trejo and other experts spoke more in depth about the key issues Trejo brought up in our video and where our viewers could directly connect with insights, resources and support.
This video was a tremendous success and helped to drive record-setting virtual attendance at AARP’s Caregiving Town Hall. On Facebook, it reached over 152k people, earned over 63,000 views and generated nearly 3,400 engagements. Nearly 13,000 people registered to attend the Town Hall virtually. (For context, the average number of registrations for AARP Virtual Community Center events is 737.) And there have been more than 500 new member requests to join AARP’s private Family Caregivers’ Group on Facebook.
Our Facebook audience related to Trejo’s story, with comments such as:
