AARP + Gen X: Breakfast Club Detention Day

“Saturday, March 24th, 1984. Shermer High School. Shermer, Illinois, 60062.”

These are the opening lines to one of the 1980s' most iconic films, “The Breakfast Club.” The John Hughes classic has become a cultural touchstone for Generation X and, decades after the movie's release, March 24 has come to be celebrated as “Detention Day” in Gen X social media spaces.

THE CONCEPT:
Our goal on TikTok is to reach and engage Gen-Xers through entertaining, relatable content that resonates with their life experiences. As the 40th anniversary of “Detention Day” approached, we knew we wanted to be part of this cultural moment — but faced a unique creative challenge: how to pay tribute to "The Breakfast Club" without using film clips or music from the soundtrack.

Inspired by one TikToker’s recreation of an unforgettable Ally Sheedy scene, we turned to the creator community to help us create something unique and memorable. The result was a 1-minute, 42-second video revisiting the film's lunch scene with high attention to detail — and not a single word of dialogue.

We reached out to the original creator, Nadine Vigil, about reprising her role as “Allison.” Leonard Burns became Emilio Estevez’s “Andrew,” John Kotrides took on Judd Nelson’s “Bender,” and Mishal Underwood channeled Molly Ringwald as “Claire.” AARP “TikTok guy” Craig Moorhead completed the cast as Anthony Michael Hall’s “Brian.”

Each creator shot their scenes, working with our AARP Studios team remotely to incorporate key details, match angles, and coordinate transitions, and we edited their footage into the finished piece.

THE RESULTS:
By partnering with some of the Gen X TikTok community’s favorite creators, we successfully tapped into a cultural moment and connected with our audience in a meaningful way. The collaboration became one of our top performers on TikTok, garnering 1M+ views in the first 24 hours, and is our most-shared video to date. Overall, the video earned 2.2M views, 128K engagements, 5K comments and 25K shares.