Reporting for Duty Series

Reporting for Duty is an original AARP YouTube series that garners over ten million views per year. It showcases how, by grit and perseverance, vets and service members overcome personal challenges and go on to teach, lead and inspire others. These stories strongly resonate with AARP’s community of veterans, active duty and military families, not only for showcasing acts of bravery and heroism, but because these characters continue to serve others long after their military career is over. They keep reporting for duty.

The first goal of the series is to connect with a key AARP audience: the veteran community. By seeking out new characters, Reporting for Duty provides great storytelling about the lives of veterans. While we focus on the 50+ community, our specific presence on YouTube allows us to appeal to the GenX community and beyond. Our second goal was to reach audiences and gain viewership outside the AARP veteran community by leveraging the tools of the platform. A third goal, for 2022 specifically, was to create a publishing cadence that would solidify AARP as a quality producer of veteran content.

In the past 365 days, the Reporting for Duty series captured over 2 million video views. Audiences are finding and engaging with the content long after its posted. Past episodes of Reporting for Duty always rank in our monthly top 5 performing videos. The continued promotional efforts behind the series contribute its success. Furthermore, most of the viewership on each episode comes from returning viewers, showing their affinity for the series and the audience we have developed. Reporting for Duty builds engagement with our channel and helps to solidify AARP's identity as a producer of high-quality veteran storytelling.