• Client: American Greetings
• Date: December 2018
• Responsiblities: creative direction, concept development, copywriting, film production

Turns out the secret to living longer, healthier, and happier isn’t within us, it’s between us.

While working on a campaign brief for a hundred-year-old greeting card company, we stumbled on research pointing us in the direction of a category-redefining insight. Ongoing research from Harvard Medical School has been studying participants for the last 80 years, working to identify factors that lead to increased health, happiness, and longevity. That research revealed one clear common factor as the greatest predictor for those who would live the longest, happiest, and physically healthiest lives.

Interestingly that one factor wasn’t related to diet, exercise, stress, lifestyle, or wealth. It was the quantity and quality of close relationships in the participants’ lives. Those with more relationships lived longer, performed better, suffered fewer health complications, and reported greater happiness throughout.

It’s a simple but powerful idea that we all know to be true in our heart of hearts and so often take for granted. So we created a body of work to demonstrate the power of human connections, and pivot this hundred-year-old greeting card company into a company purpose-built to facilitate human connection.

The film features a series of elite athletes at the absolute top of their game and puts them through two workouts in one day—physical and emotional. The athletes were key to our story because we all assume from their physical physique and athletic prowess that they are gods among the rest of us. But we often fail to give credence to the fact that these elite athletes are also surrounded by an extraordinary human support network of trainers, coaches, therapists, and teammates.

In addition to the film partnered with the Harvard study researcher to design a curriculum for a gym class designed to workout both mind and body. The class was called Greeting Cardio and is offered as a free course at participating YMCA locations.