The problem:By 2050 Australia will have 3 million people in aged care, double what it is now.If the trend continues there won’t be enough aged care workers to look after us.Yet this time-bomb is ignored by politicians and the public.The objective: Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) wanted us to put aged care on the political and public agenda.The strategy:Emphasise that aged care is everyone’s problem. The target was our nation’s leader Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd. So we created Kevin87, (a parody of his election-winning campaign slogan, Kevin 07). A campaign where we created an 87 year old Prime minister.For maximum impact we distributed the video content to all online and offline media on September 21st 2009, the Prime Minister's 52nd Birthday.The outcome:National Headline Coverage in Australia’s top TV online, radio and newspapers networks.No 1 news story online on launch day.Generated over 200 free TV spots.Over a dozen radio interviews with ACSA beating benchmarks by 500%100,000 headlines on social networks.All for less than $90,000.But most importantly, it caught the Prime Minister’s attention.After years of disregard aged care now has a voice in Australia.

The campaign was launched on the eve of Prime Minister's 52nd birthday on 21st Sept 2009 to create maximum impact for the concept of 'none of us is getting any younger'. The video content and information release was distributed to all media channels nation-wide, including TV, radio newspapers and social media. The opportunity for radio interviews that morning with the ACSA CEO was offered. The campaign included a website, (where we also aged other politicians) and where the public could offer support to the aged care workers and interact with Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. The video was also available to be embedded from host sites. The campaign only ran for three weeks, as ACSA is a NFP and had limited funds. The campaign ran to plan yet was extended by the content being played for free on national TVtalk shows satirising the video over the following weeks.

The campaign was viewed by 20 million Australians according to the number of viewers/listeners at the time to the media campaign. Radio interview benchmarks were exceeded by 500%, with the ACSA CEO Greg Mundy scheduled on 13 national radio stations that morning. National TV networks ran the story as headlines. Talk shows satirised the video content. We recieved over 200 free television spots on the strength of the content. Online blogs exposed kevin87 to over 269,000 viewers with over 100, 000 headlines on social networks. The mentions of ACSA online had previously only 7 search google results but increased to over 25,000 after launch. The youtube video was viewed over 14000 times. Coverage reached 20million of our 22 million population. Most importantly, The Prime Minister acknowledged the campaign, while other politicians targeted were also aware of the campaign.