Real People, Real Stories Series

AARP’s Real People, Real Stories series celebrates ordinary individuals from diverse backgrounds whose actions have made an extraordinary impact on themselves and a wider community. The series continues AARP Studios’ longstanding tradition of powerful profiles on Facebook.

From the outset, our goals were to ramp up production of these age-positive, human interest profiles; develop a pipeline for authentic, multicultural voices; and create a storytelling vehicle that inspires, connects and uplifts viewers to choose how they live as they age. Our hypothesis was that by finding and telling stories that speak to underserved audiences, and meeting them where they were – on Facebook – we could generate initial interest with a target audience and then expand the story’s impact to resonate with all viewers who appreciate compelling narratives and inspirational storytelling.

This series has exceeded goals and has connected with our audience. We were successfully able to ramp up our production in one year, creating 30 episodes since the launch of the series in Sept. 2021 through the end of 2022. Additionally, this series has developed a viable pipeline of stories featuring diverse and underrepresented voices. So far, nearly 70 percent of our subjects have a multicultural background, and our top five highest viewed Real People, Real Story videos in 2022 all featured multicultural subjects from the LGBTQ+, AAPI, African American/Black, and Deaf communities.

This series is a standout performer on AARP’s website and social media accounts. The 30 episodes in the series have reached over 23 million people, garnered nearly 6.5 million views and generated more than 850,000 engagements in one year. Fourteen videos have over 100K views each. Real People, Real Stories also has the highest average views across all series on Facebook for AARP.

​​We’ve found that the stories are resonating with viewers. This emotional impact has been demonstrated through comments such as, “What a beautiful soul, you have to be who you are meant to be, I hope you inspire many young souls to find their true self” and “Beautiful! Gives us all hope for future health and continued activity.”