Man Enough Case Study Report

Man Enough

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Man Enough To Care: A Case Study June 2021 Caring Across Generations Supported by the Blue Shield of California Foundation, Ford Foundation, Pop Culture Collaborative, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Written by Ishita Srivastava and Sarah Vitti | Designed by bombilla

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Table of Contents 3

Summary

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The Origin Story

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Our Theory of Change

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Breaking the Barriers to Care as an Essential Issue

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Partnership & Process

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A Bump in the Road

Man Enough to Care: The Series & Campaign 16

Content and Activations

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Influencers

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Media Partners

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Organizational Partners

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Earned Media

Goals, Objectives, & How We Did 46

Man Enough to Care Campaign Goals

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Caring Across’ Broader Objectives that this Campaign Supported

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Campaign Objectives & How We Did

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Campaign Reach in California

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Qualitative Impact Towards Transforming Cultural Norms & Building Cultural Power

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Takeaways & Learnings

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Man Enough to Care Production & Campaign Credits

www.caringacross.com

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Summary From Valentine’s Day to National Caregivers Day, February 14 to February 19, 2021, Caring Across Generations ran a digital campaign around Man Enough to Care, a five-episode miniseries created in partnership with the actor and filmmaker Justin Baldoni, his brand, Man Enough, and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, that called on millennial men to step up, step in, identify themselves as caregivers, and join a conversation that began to define a new, healthy masculinity rooted in a culture of care.

The Man Enough to Care series centers on a filmed roundtable discussion exploring several caregiving themes as they relate to masculinity and gender norms, hosted by actor and director Justin Baldoni (Jane the Virgin, Clouds, Five Feet Apart), and featuring former NFL star Devon Still, actor Nathan Kress (iCarly, Star Wars Rebels), comedian and writer Zach Anner (Speechless), caregiving advocate Robert Espinoza (Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute - PHI), and Ai-jen Poo, Director of Caring Across Generations and the Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

The series — a uniquely vulnerable, empathetic, and uplifting exploration of what it means to provide care and be cared for as a man in today’s society — reached millions of people online, engaged dozens of partners, and garnered tens of thousands of engagements across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and media outlets. This case study describes the unique collaboration that brought this cultureshifting series and campaign into existence, walks through the process of production and planning, and outlines the quantitative and qualitative reach and impact that the series and accompanying digital campaign had in the month after their release.

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The Origin Story In 2011, Ai-jen Poo and Sarita Gupta founded Caring Across Generations with an ambitious goal: to fundamentally change how care and caregiving is valued in the U.S., to reshape the caring economy, and to build a care infrastructure that would allow us to take care of our families, and live, work, and age with dignity.

Sarita and Ai-jen began by hosting Care Congresses around the country, where they heard stories from care workers, care recipients, and family caregivers. Each Care Congress began with a simple question: “Can you share a story about someone you care for, or who has cared for you?” An organizer would then model this by telling their own care story, and ask for others to volunteer their story. Without fail, every meeting would elicit a rich discussion — ranging from a slow crescendo, as people came to realize their family’s experiences were actually care stories, to a wave of outpouring and people scrambling to share as they finally got space to let out all they were bearing alone.

Through this organizing and listening tour, it became clear that even people who were in the midst of care crises did not always identify as being caregivers. Even though people, especially women and

Sarita and Ai-jen began by hosting Care Congresses around the country, where they heard stories from care workers, care recipients, and family caregivers.

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women of color, had been caregiving for centuries, people related to caregiver as a new identity: one that needed to be made visible, colored in, and organized around. Caregivers and care recipients needed to identify as such, and feel like they belonged to a movement in which they were no longer pitted against each other, but saw themselves as allied segments of the care ecosystem; part of powerful caresquads that, when organized together, could demand better for themselves and their loved ones.

What Sarita and Ai-jen also saw was that, when people heard different iterations of their own caregiving story repeated across a large gathering, it validated their experience, giving it legitimacy, and gave them a sense that their struggles were not just theirs alone but indicative of harmful cultural norms and cracks in the system that needed to be fixed.

Our Theory of Change The insights from the Care Congresses informed the shaping of Caring Across’ campaign strategy. We recognized that, in order to transform the ecosystem and infrastructure for care (so that everyone can care for their loved ones, and live and age with dignity), we would need to fight for groundbreaking policies at the federal and state level, build power amongst those whom we call the Caring Majority — family caregivers, care workers, and those receiving care — and invest in culture and narrative change strategies that change how we relate to and value caregiving.

Our theory of change is built on the idea that there are two types of truths, what is factually true and what is emotionally true.

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Our theory of change is built on the idea that there are two types of truths, what is factually true and what is emotionally true, and that in order to achieve our goals, we need strategies that appeal to, and shift both ways of making meaning and acting in the world. So while we transform policy and laws, we also need to transform the narrative systems that influence how we feel about things, how we make meaning, and shape our ability to imagine the world we want to build. When we talk about social change requiring deep systemic changes, this has to include transforming the dominant narratives that help us define ourselves, our place in the world, what is just and normal, and what we deserve. For these narratives to shift, we have to make interventions in culture.

Looking at the stories told during the Care Congresses, and digging into the language used to talk about care work in mainstream media and popular culture (“house work,” “help”), it was clear that social norms rooted in a sexist and racist history were partially responsible for the devaluing of caregiving and the lack of infrastructure to support the care needs of families across generations. Caregiving has traditionally been associated with women’s work in the home, and primarily associated with women of color, black women and immigrant women, rendering it invisible and deeply undervalued in our culture. Moreover, the seminal American narrative of individualism has relegated care to being largely thought of as an individual burden or family burden at most, rather than a collective, social responsibility warranting a public solution. These deeply and historically entrenched attitudes, norms, and beliefs shape our understanding and our behavior, and in the case of care, stand in the way of us treating care as a social and political priority. To build a demand and pathway for long-term change, we need to shift these norms and narratives around caregiving and create the cultural conditions necessary for everyone to care for their loved ones and live, work, and age with dignity.

To this end, our broad culture change goals are: 1) We move from caregiving and caregivers being invisible and undervalued to being visible and valued in our culture.

2) We move a critical mass of people from thinking about care and caregiving as an individual, private burden to thinking of it as a collective, social responsibility with a collective solution.

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Our culture change work aims to build cultural presence and power in favor of our values, narratives, and the central protagonists of our movement (family caregivers, care workers, and those who need care, especially elders and people with disabilities) in order to move hearts and minds in a way that shifts attitudes and behaviors, and eventually shifts cultural norms. One critical way that we build cultural presence in favor of our values and protagonists is by contributing to a 360° narrative environment that puts caregivers’ stories, in all their breadth and depth, at the center of pop culture and media products.

Our culture change work aims to build cultural presence and power in favor of our values, narratives, and the central protagonists of our movement.

The Man Enough to Care series and campaign was one such intervention in building that narrative environment centering and amplifying care, leveraging digital platforms that reached new audiences.

Building cultural and narrative power in favor of care and caregivers includes investing in building transformational partnerships with entities in the entertainment industry in such a way that they will continue to include narratives and stories about caregivers in their work even after the specific collaboration has come to an end. The unique partnership with Wayfarer Studios and Justin Baldoni was a contribution towards building lasting cultural power in favor of our values, our people, and our goals.

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Breaking the Barriers to Care as an Essential Issue With these broader culture change goals in mind, we created the Man Enough to Care series and digital campaign to challenge and shift gendered attitudes about caregiving, especially amongst men.

Care work has long been considered “women’s work,” a belief that has created the landscape within which caregivers and the people they care for are invisible and devalued.

While there are 53 million Americans caring for an adult loved one today, it is a little talked about fact that 40% of these caregivers (20 million) are male. Yet because of how care work has been gendered culturally, economically, and by our government and workplace policies, it has been consequently devalued and taken for granted as the work of women only (and when paid, women of color).

While there are 53 million Americans caring for an adult loved one today, it is a little talked about fact that 40% of these caregivers (20 million) are male.

The truth is that both women and men are paying the price for caregiving, remaining invisible and gendered in outdated ways. Studies have found caregiving men, especially in eldercare roles, to be more isolated, reluctant to ask for help, and unprepared to take on new caregiving responsibilities.

Women, more often expected to shoulder the burden of caregiving, suffer significant financial, mental, and physical consequences, while paid professional caregiving women make poverty wages.

If we are to live, take care of our families, and age with dignity, we need to transform cultural norms around care and ensure that caregivers are at the center of transformative policy that allows people to access the care they need throughout their lifetime (including childcare, paid medical and family leave, and long-term supports and services). One crucial step towards this is to challenge the traditional parameters of masculinity that exclude care and caregiving, while simultaneously challenging traditional, gendered attitudes towards care that place the burden on women caregivers, and render caregiving and care work invisible, undervalued, and underpaid (in the case of care workers, the majority of whom are women of color and immigrant women). And this is what the Man Enough to Care campaign sought to do.

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Partnership & Process On a sunny morning in October 2018, Ai-jen Poo and Ishita Srivastava, Caring Across’ Director of Culture Change, met Justin Baldoni for coffee in LA. A TED alumnus himself, Justin had watched Ai-jen’s TED talk and was interested in connecting and learning more about her work on care and gender justice. It became rapidly evident that there was a strong alignment on values between them and a keen intention to collaborate.

For Justin and the Man Enough team, caregiving seemed like an important and rarely-talkedabout entry-point into their ongoing project of reframing and reimagining masculinity.

Caring Across started working with Justin Baldoni and his brand, Man Enough, as well as his production company, Wayfarer Studios, in 2019. The aim of the collaboration was to produce an episode of the Man Enough web series that would be focused on caregiving, thereby challenging traditional notions of masculinity and shattering the harmful norm that caregiving is and should be women’s work — a norm that, along with racism, has contributed to the devaluing of caregiving for centuries. For Justin and the Man Enough team, caregiving seemed like an important and rarelytalked-about entry-point into their ongoing project of reframing and reimagining masculinity.

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It was important to be clear about the nature of the collaboration from the start. Caring Across was investing resources and expertise into producing substantive, quality content that would add something new and unique to the narrative environment about care and resonate with a key, target audience of men who were caregivers. But this wasn’t a conventional client-vendor relationship: it was strategic for both parties that the content would be produced in Man Enough’s brand and voice and be disseminated primarily on their digital platforms, to their audiences. Caring Across would play the role of consulting producer, working very closely with the Man Enough creative team on the treatment, casting, script, edits, as well as advise on all aspects of the digital campaign. Caring Across would consult at every step of the process and give final sign off, but Man Enough’s creative direction, voice, and platform was key to achieving the goals of the project. Of course, Justin Baldoni’s brand and voice as the producer of Man Enough, a feminist, a father, and an influencer would play a large role in the shaping of the content, as well as its distribution.

The format of the video would model that of previous Man Enough episodes, centered on a structured but organic conversation between Justin and other men from the worlds of pop culture and entertainment who have a connection to the theme. Their personal experiences of caregiving would be contextualized by an ‘expert’ interview with Ai-jen.

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Ahmed Musiol (Director) and Farhoud Meybodi (Producer) from the Wayfarer team had multiple conversations with Ishita (Director of Culture Change), Janet (Director of Communications), and Ai-jen from the Caring Across team to understand the layers and complexities of caregiving as an issue and developed a treatment and cast list based on those conversations. For Caring Across, it was important that the voices at the table covered the breadth of experience of providing care across the lifespan: caring for a child, a partner, and an elderly loved one. Since the goal was to reach men and maleidentifying people, we were keen to include an influencer from the world of sports, working on the assumption that that would enable the content to reach an even wider audience. Lastly, we wanted to ensure that someone with the experience of living with a disability and receiving care was also present at the table. Wayfarer came up with an incredible cast: former NFL star Devon Still who quit the NFL to care for his 4 year old daughter who had cancer; actor Nathan Kress (iCarly, Star Wars Rebels) who cared for his toddler and his wife with endometriosis, comedian and writer Zach Anner (Speechless) who has cerebral palsy and has been a recipient of care at various points in his life, actor Malik Yoba (Cool Runnings, New York Undercover) who was caring for his mother with dementia, and caregiving advocate Robert Espinoza (Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute - PHI) who was there as an expert voice at the table (rather than an influencer). Robert also brought to the table his personal experience of being a long-distance caregiver for his mother.

”This feels like the first time a group of influential men have sat down and had such an honest and vulnerable conversation about care. This feels unprecedented.”

- Ai-jen Poo

The content was filmed in February 2019 in LA, at Justin Baldoni’s personal residence, the same location where all previous episodes of the Man Enough series had been filmed. As the dinner table conversation between the men unfolded during the shoot, Ai-jen turned to Ishita and said, “This feels like the first time a group of influential men have sat down and had such an honest and vulnerable conversation about care. This feels unprecedented.” Indeed, as Ahmed, Ishita and Ai-jen listened in, every few minutes the conversation seemed like it was covering unchartered territory that was revelatory, astonishing,

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and touching. On day two of the shoot, Justin interviewed Ai-jen to get the historical context as well as the cultural and legislative landscape around care that would frame the dinner table conversation in the episode. At the end of the 2-day shoot in LA, both teams felt confident that the footage that was captured would fulfill the purpose of transforming norms around masculinity and caregiving.

The editing process took place over the spring and summer of 2019, with the idea that the episode and accompanying digital campaign would be released in the fall of that year. As with the rest of the process, the Caring Across team weighed in on multiple cuts and the episode was finalized in August.

Within Caring Across, the culture change team consulted with the policy, communications, digital, and organizing teams at various points during the editing process.

A BUMP IN THE ROAD As the teams started planning the digital campaign and working towards an October launch, in August of 2019, the news broke that a woman had made allegations against Malik Yoba saying that he had paid her for sex 20 years previously, when she was a minor. This was followed by accusations from other trans women who said he had also paid them for sex when they were minors. Malik Yoba denied all allegations and responded with anger when asked about it by the press. Even though a formal case wasn’t lodged against him, the Wayfarer and Caring Across teams decided that they did not feel comfortable releasing the episode with Malik Yoba in it.

This difficult decision-point led to an extremely challenging process of figuring out how to proceed.

Since Malik was an intrinsic part of the dinner table conversation, it was clear that, in order to take him out, the episode would need to be significantly re-edited, costing additional money. Based on the high quality of the content that had been captured and the investment that had already been made, Caring Across made the decision to fundraise the additional resources needed to complete the edit and launch the campaign. By the time Caring Across was ready to move forward, it was spring 2020 and the pandemic hit, further delaying the process. In the meanwhile, Wayfarer Studios and the Man Enough teams went through a major restructuring and series of staffing changes that altered the team that was working on the project. Both teams, changed and shaken by the pandemic, finally jumped back into the post-production process in the summer of 2020. On Caring Across’ end, Ishita Srivastava (who was leading the project) went out on parental leave from June to October, leaving her (brandnew) colleague Sarah Vitti (Culture Change Manager) to see the edit to the finish line.

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As a result of editing Malik Yoba out, what was originally filmed as a stand-alone, 30-minute episode ended up taking the form of five 7-minute short films that covered important aspects of the culture and context of caregiving in the U.S. and built a strong narrative arc when watched in totality. Once the content was finalized and Ishita was back at work, the teams decided on a Valentine’s Day (2021) launch date and began building and planning the digital campaign that would accompany the video series.

This project and partnership was tested by a series of unforeseen circumstances, but, in hindsight, the bumps in the road turned out to be fortuitous for a few reasons:

• The content was much more accessible, and more easily watchable and shareable in the form of five short episodes that built on one another but also stood well on their own, than it would have been as a single 30-minute episode.

• The new iteration of the Man Enough team brought the capacity and commitment that was needed to execute a layered and complex campaign that matched the series. They were efficient, professional, and always respectful of the Caring Across culture change and digital teams’ goals, objectives, and expertise. It felt like a truly transformational partnership between a Hollywoodbased entertainment and marketing team and a non-profit organization.

• The timing of the campaign meant that, by the time the campaign launched, the Covid-19 pandemic had brought the issue of care and caregiving into the spotlight in an unprecedented way, and the digital and social media space seemed much better suited to content engaging men about caregiving than it would have been in 2019.

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Man Enough to Care: The Series & Campaign Much like the video series, the digital campaign was produced by Man Enough’s communications and marketing teams, in their brand, with a plan for it to be distributed primarily on their platforms to their audiences — audiences that Caring Across would otherwise not have been able to reach. In the same way that Caring Across guided the production of the video series, they also closely guided and shaped the content for the campaign, providing messaging, facts, caregiver stories, and broader context. Man Enough’s digital audience was not accustomed to engaging with content about caregiving, so it was important to make sure that the content was drafted in a way that was accessible to them, while still being on-message for Caring Across.

The campaign, comprising teaser videos, posts introducing the cast, infographics about care, polls, and calls to action, ran from February 14th (Valentine’s Day) to February 19th (National Caregivers Day), with one video released each day from the 14th-18th. The campaign culminated with an Instagram Live conversation on February 19th in the form of a reunion amongst Justin, Ai-jen, and some of the other cast in honor of National Caregivers Day. All assets and events were co-branded between Man Enough and Caring Across Generations. The teams came up with the campaign hashtag #CareWithME that was used across all content and platforms to track engagement across the campaign. The main campaign ask was for people to identify as caregivers themselves or tag a caregiver in their life and honor them, using the hashtag #CareWithME. The Man Enough website was the campaign home, with the episodes, outlined below, uploaded natively on Man Enough’s YouTube channel, as well as Man Enough’s social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram TV) and shared on Twitter. Caring Across worked in close collaboration with the Man Enough team to execute parallel rollouts of the episodes and accompanying assets across their website, email, and social media platforms. Justin Baldoni and key organizational partners joined Man Enough and Caring Across in teasing the campaign and content the week of Feb 8th.

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CONTENT & ACTIVATIONS February 8-13: Pre-launch On February 8th, Man Enough announced the upcoming series on their page with an introduction to the cast and a teaser.

On Feb 11th, Justin posted a selfie video to Man Enough’s Instagram page that introduced the campaign and Caring Across Generations, and asked viewers to think about their own caregiving experiences, share their own care stories, or shout-out the male caregivers in their lives.

Caring Across and Man Enough continued posting and re-sharing teaser content across all social platforms leading up to the launch.

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Pre-launch campaign assets

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February 14, Episode 1: A Love That Comes Full Circle

In the first episode, the Man Enough cast opens up about their experiences giving and receiving care.

Nathan talks about caring for his wife through her journey with endometriosis, and his fear of needing to be a caregiver for his daughter later in her life, as she will be at risk for the same illness. Together, the cast discuss the importance of care with the highs and lows, and the love and joy that come with it.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN FOR EPISODE 1: There were five unique posts for launch day in addition to sharing the full episode. Supplemental content included an introduction to the current landscape of care and male caregivers, short clips from the episode, a blog post written by the Man Enough team, and polls that prompted viewers to answer questions about how care had impacted their own lives, with a swipe up feature that encouraged them to join a community of caregivers that directed them to Caring Across’ website.

HIGHLIGHT Episode 1 accounted for over 62% of the total IGTV views across the campaign, with 187K views of the episode on Man Enough’s instagram alone. This was also the most saved episode on Man Enough’s IGTV (6476 saves), as well as the most shared episode (2955 shares).

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Campaign assets for Episode 1

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February 15, Episode 2: You Are Not Alone

In episode 2, Devon shares his personal experience as a caregiver for his four year-old daughter with cancer and talks about how caring for her changed his personal and professional life forever. He also talks about the importance of vulnerability and how being vulnerable in front of his daughter, his family, and his peers took a lot of strength.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN FOR EPISODE 2: To amplify the second episode, Nathan recorded a selfie video encouraging viewers to share their stories using the hashtag #CareWithME, followed by a carousel post with tips for how to check in with caregivers.

By day two, the campaign started receiving stories from male caregivers who seemed to deeply resonate with the content that was being shared. From this point onwards for the duration of the campaign, the Man Enough team monitored the stories that were coming in and quickly turned them into shareable graphics that became additional content and encouraged other viewers to share their experiences as well.

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Campaign assets for Episode 2

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February 16, Episode 3: The Cost of Care

In episode 3, Justin and Ai-jen discuss the financial impact of caregiving on families and envision a path forward through culture change, collective action, and policy solutions that will lead us to a reality in which care is valued, and everyone has the support they need to access and afford care for themselves and their loved ones.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN FOR DAY 3: This episode served the purpose of raising awareness around the financial realities that caregiving families face. It created a touchpoint for people, particularly men, to begin to value caregiving as work, and furthermore to understand it as work that often goes unrecognized and uncompensated.

The Wayfarer team edited several bite-sized clips from this episode to highlight key points about the cost of care and shared those throughout the day on the Man Enough platform. There was also an accompanying blog post for viewers to learn more about what this cost really means for families. Lastly, more posts were created and shared in real time that featured incoming stories from viewers.

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Campaign assets for Episode 3

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February 17, Episode 4: Embracing Vulnerability

In this episode, Zach opens up about his experience as someone who has received care at various points in his life and provides candid, insightful, and often humorous insights into releasing the feelings of guilt and insecurity associated with being cared for. Ai-jen and Justin remind us that caregiving is an intimate act of love that also brings joy and strengthens relationships.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN FOR DAY 4: The episode’s content on vulnerability came primarily from Zach, who shared candidly about receiving and needing care as a man with a disability, and how learning to embrace vulnerability by reshaping his own worldview about being a man who needs help allowed him to find acceptance, pride, joy, and deeper connection with his parents and peers. Supplemental content on Day 4 included a selfie video from Devon going deeper into his own experience with learning vulnerability as a caregiver for his daughter, as well as a carousel of infographics that were created to debunk the idea that masculine strength needs to be connected to being self-sufficient and asking for help is a sign of weakness.

Because Zach was the only cast member with the perspective of receiving care, and Caring Across’ work intersects so deeply with the work of the disability rights movement, we thought it was especially important to lift up and center this piece. We partnered with DREDF (Disability Rights Education and

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Defense Fund) to host a TweetChat about masculinity and disability and unpack traditional gender norms around vulnerability and receiving care. Participants included activist Ady Barkan and his organization Be A Hero, Lawrence Carter-Long from DREDF, actor and writer AJ Murray, writer and producer Andrew Pilkington, and Lateef McLeod, an activist with Caring Across’ close partner Hand in Hand. We were also joined by organizational allies The Arc, PL+US (Paid Leave for the US), Work Family CA, and Be a Hero PAC.

Highlight Zach Anner shared Episode 4 on his Facebook page to his 341K followers, where it had 2.7K likes, 80+ comments, and 500+ shares. The overwhelming response to the episode signaled how important and necessary this conversation on vulnerability was. Audiences were eager to respond by using the Man Enough platforms to share their experience of being caregivers. This episode had a high overall reach: • 138K Impressions • 65K Views

• 300+ Comments • 980+ Shares

• 13.9K Engagements

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Campaign assets for Episode 4

The TweetChat was immensely successful, garnering 440k impressions (compared to less than 11k Caring Across Twitter impressions the day before), with over 2k engagements, 280 retweets, 62 replies, and 84 new Twitter followers for Caring Across. The TweetChat received organic spread and participation with a total of 245 people/accounts using the hashtag during the chat. Most notably, 55.35% of the people engaging with the hashtag during the TweetChat were men. Women who participated wrote that they saw the topic of conversation — vulnerability and being shut out of the bounds of masculinity — as extremely poignant and relevant to the men with disabilities in their lives.

We used the tool Keyhole to analyze the sentiments captured from engagement during the TweetChat, which measured 91% positive. Sentiment is measured by software that breaks down things like the language used and the tone of posts to determine if viewers are interacting with a “brand” positively or negatively. Our username (@caringacrossgen) was the top positive keyword, indicating that this event was extremely positive for Caring Across’ overall brand and work. This understanding is especially important as Caring Across increasingly works with disability justice partners in other areas of our work.

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The TweetChat was immensely successful, garnering 440k impressions (compared to less than 11k Caring Across Twitter impressions the day before) with a measured 91% positive sentiment.

Perhaps most importantly, we were able to extrapolate from this tool that people engaged with the TweetChat in a way that was authentic and meaningful. We assessed that this was likely because, unlike most of Caring Across’ activity on Twitter, the content was focused on individual people and their experiences rather than policy. We witnessed high-quality, rich, and more authentic conversations than usual from participants and other Twitter users who ‘tuned in’ and re-tweeted with experiences of their own. Instead of being about caregivers like the rest of the campaign, this conversation was focused on the perspective of people who receive care. Furthermore, it was from the perspective of men who needed and received care. Those who answered our Twitter prompts about masculinity and disability shared their experiences with a lot of vulnerability and honesty, and, in many ways, it felt like the TweetChat had just begun to scratch the surface of something new and important.

We witnessed highquality, rich, and more authentic conversations than usual from participants and other Twitter users who ‘tuned in’ and re-tweeted with experiences of their own.

TweetChat engagement with Episode 4

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February 18, Episode 5: Care for All

In episode 5, Robert shares his experience of being a long-distance caregiver for his mother and talks about the shocking realization his family had when they found that there is no system in place to support people to receive care at home. Ai-jen then lays out what it will take for us to achieve sustainable, Universal Family Care for all (a social insurance fund that everyone would pay into and benefit from, that would enable people to access care across their lifespan including childcare, paid medical and family leave, and long term supports and services). Ai-jen notes that an important first step towards better systems for care is having these conversations with our families, friends, and communities.

DIGITAL CAMPAIGN FOR DAY 5: The final episode of the series went live on Thursday, February 18, with an inspiring and hopeful message of what’s possible in terms of changing the landscape of caregiving so that everyone can live, age, and care for one another with dignity. By this point, the campaign had collected over a hundred messages and comments from viewers using the hashtag #CareWithME in which they had shared their own experiences as caregivers or from those who wanted to lift up the male caregivers in their lives. We showcased these beautiful stories across social platforms throughout the day and encouraged viewers to continue sharing, which people continued to do for a few weeks after the campaign ended.

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Hi! I honestly have never seen videos like this before and it gives me such a relief as it does anxiety. Thank you for posting them! I am a caregiver for a partner with EDS and a few other conditions and just want to engage in the conversation. So many things you talk about - the bad days and balancing work, to the good days that just don’t seem as good in comparison to the barrage of amazing things we see friends do on Instagram - it all adds up and I am realizing I don’t handle it as well as I could and I should rely more on resources that I always knew were there, but never put myself in the category of needing. It is hard to admit that I need more help, but I also need to learn it’s my not fault, nor is it weak on my part, to ask for more help. Again, thank you for the videos, they mean a lot and I am learning more by the day.

paulohmert So true. Still working on myself not to feel like a failture, when empathy and emotional caring is needed in my family. Thanks for the truthful and open sharing of your learnings.

Stories and messages in response to Episode 5

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Additional Digital Activations Since the Man Enough to Care series exposed so many different layers of caregiving to an audience that had never really thought about it before, we knew that there was room to engage people outside of the content that had been produced. The campaign decided to execute two more ancillary activations (the TweetChat being the first of three in total) in the days after the last episode was shared. Each activation served a distinct purpose, but both aimed to cultivate even deeper conversations with the cast members and the campaign audience, and really showcase the facets of caregiving and how they touch everyone.

A MAN ENOUGH TO CARE REUNION ON IG LIVE FOR NATIONAL CAREGIVERS DAY

“I think people need to realize it’s just as manly for people to be home and change diapers. There’s a 100% chance that you’re going to need to be a caregiver to someone at some point in your life, and I think this dialogue that we’ve had in setting up the fact that it isn’t masculine to take care of people and the perception that this is women’s work is utterly absurd. I think this conversation was really important to open that door to help people realize that, and that it’s also okay to cry about it.”

- Nathan Kress

On February 19 (National Caregivers Day), Justin Baldoni hosted a 45-minute Instagram Live conversation with some of the cast from the series: Ai-jen Poo, Nathan Kress, and Devon Still. Justin reunited with them one by one (since, at that point, Instagram only allowed two people on Live at one time). The aim was to get all these people with big platforms together to ‘debrief’ the series — checking in two years after the shoot to learn what’s next on the policy front, as well as following up with Nathan and Devon on some of the meaningful experiences they shared in the series and where their caregiving experiences are now.

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Some amazing things happened during this IG Live. The first being that, when Nathan joined the IG Live, he brought several thousands of his iCarly fans along with him. The second was that because Nathan and Justin get along well, they went somewhat ‘off script’ from the questions and talking points that had been drafted, which left a lot of room for fun banter that we believe kept a lot of viewers engaged and also created an opening for really authentic conversation. Nathan revealed that he and his wife had experienced a miscarriage just before filming the series and another shortly after, which added an even deeper layer to his caregiving experience that many viewers could relate to. Nathan even brought up Universal Family Care (UFC), the north star policy framework that Caring Across has been working towards.

Lastly, bringing each guest onto Justin’s platform with him hosting meant we were casting a wide net for viewership with Devon, Ai-jen, and Nathan adding their own audiences into the conversation when they joined. This conversation reached 101k people and an additional 5.6K people in the days following.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH ROUNDTABLE WITH COLOR OF CHANGE

One of the most important conversations that the series raised via Devon Still’s experience that didn’t get enough screen time within the series itself was around the exploration of masculinity for Black men who are caregivers. Since it was Black History month and Devon Still is such a powerful spokesperson for the series and the issue, Caring Across decided to curate a panel to go deeper into this specific experience with a group of black men. On Tuesday, February 23 we partnered with Color of Change to host a conversation about masculinity and caregiving in the context of Black families and Black culture.

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The roundtable featured Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, as the moderator, with Devon Still and three other Black male caregivers: Bradley Williams (Senior Digital Strategist and caregiver for his mother), Coston Plummer (Home Care Worker and caregiver for his mother and brother), and Bruce Brown (Minister and teacher and co-caregiver for his grandmother).

The Caring Across team drafted the questions and scheduled time to prep Rashad and the speakers so that they could give feedback and shape the questions in a way that resonated and made sense for their lived experiences. Similar to the TweetChat, it felt like the roundtable just began scratching the surface on this topic, but what resulted was the most honest and dynamic conversations around gendered and racist narratives around care that Caring Across’ digital and culture change teams had ever seen.

“Getting involved with my union and meeting other people, men especially, that worked in this home care field was the biggest thing that kept me going. Whenever I found myself slowing down, someone was there to grab my hand and say ‘come on, it’s going to be okay.’

- Coston Plummer

“There are so many stories about Black men that center us as the problem, when in so many ways this conversation that we’re having is not about Black men as the problem but instead about Black men as the solution.”

- Rashad Robinson

“To me, masculinity has no gender. I’ve seen an example of that in my mom and my sister. I’ve seen my mom have to play both roles sometimes, be the protective one, and to make the most out of every situation without many resources. And as a Black queer man, especially in Louisiana, I’m very thankful for a lot of the Black women in my life who showed me that having that masculine identity can go hand in hand. We should allow ourselves to be vulnerable.”

- Bradley Williams

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The conversation was cross-posted on Facebook Live across Wayfarer Studios, Man Enough, Color of Change, and Caring Across Generations’ pages. It reached 10.4k people and garnered 285 reactions, 76 shares, and 135 comments from engaged viewers.

Stories and messages in response to the Black History Month Roundable

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INFLUENCERS One key reason for the wide reach and success of the Man Enough to Care campaign was that it had a number of influencers built into the cast of the series itself. Not only were they bought into the project and ready to share the series and the campaign content, but having them on board made it easier to talk to the press and garner the interest of other influencers as we rolled out the series.

• For the TweetChat on the topic of disability and masculinity, it was important for us to include activist Ady Barkan’s voice in the conversation. Having DREDF as a partner for the event and it being centered around a series that featured four prominent voices made this a relatively easy ask. Ady has almost 200k followers on Twitter.

• For National Caregivers Day, we leveraged existing relationships and the widespread success of the series to get Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to share a video thanking caregivers using our hashtag #CareWithME. The Second Gentleman’s Twitter account reaches 1.5 million followers.

• Because Devon spoke to the unique experience of being an NFL player, a Black man, and a caregiver in the series, we knew we could pique the interest of Rashad Robinson and Color of Change to co-host the Facebook Live conversation about Black masculinity and caregiving.

Rashad and Color of Change’s social media platforms together reach about 1.5 million people.

• Caring Across Generations has had a long-standing relationship with Seth and Lauren Miller Rogen through their work around Alzheimers awareness and their organization Hilarity for Charity. Lauren loved the series and campaign and shared an episode clip to her 66k followers on Instagram along with her own care story and the #CareWithME hashtag.

Key Measurements for Tracked #CareWithME Posts from Influencers: • 6 Influencers published 254 #CareWithME posts across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (including posts and stories).

• The total reach of posts was 5.2M, with 51.1M Impressions and 0.36% Engagement Rate.

• Each post got an average of 716.9 Engagements, 20.3K Reach, and $9K in Estimated Media Value (EMV)*.

• The campaign generated a total of $2.3M in Estimated Media Value from influencer posts.

• The audience was 79% Women, mostly from the United States. * The EMV metric measures the value of reach and engagement received by an influencer on a campaign.

It estimates how much ad spend would be required to receive the same results with paid media buying.

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And even without this additional influencer involvement, having Justin (about 3.2 million followers), Nathan (about 5.3 million followers), Devon (about 640k followers), and Zach (about 100k followers) share and engage with the campaign content on their own pages, having them share self-recorded videos inviting people to share their own care stories, and reuniting during the Instagram Live on National Caregivers Day added a powerful boost to the campaign’s reach and was critical to its success.

We believe that it was the strength of the partnership between Caring Across and Man Enough (about 65k followers), the quality of the content that was produced, and our shared vision for a powerful campaign that got our influencers excited to engage as much as they did.

#CareWithME posts by influencers

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MEDIA PARTNERS Wayfarer Studios and the Man Enough team leveraged their relationships to pitch this series to media partners for additional distribution. They secured in-kind advertising and distribution from Vox Media and Reach TV, allowing the campaign to reach far beyond Caring Across and Man Enough’s audiences.

Through Man Enough’s partnership with Vox, the media outlet provided one of their most soughtafter ad units, a takeover banner on the homepage. The ad unit had an in-unit autoplay video player, wrapped with a custom banner ad. For the duration of the Man Enough to Care campaign, each day the banner was updated to reflect the day’s post. The campaign ended with 1.1M Video views and 1.5K Website clicks.

Through the media partnership with ReachTV (an in-airport OTT TV display board), the episodes of Man Enough to Care were aired across 68 US airports. During the flight time of 22 days, the campaign reported 91.2K video play throughs and 28.8M impressions.

Man Enough’s Partnership with Vox and ReachTV

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ORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS Caring Across was responsible for bringing organizational partners on board to amplify and disseminate the content. The Culture Change team strategized in collaboration with the Advocacy and Campaign teams around which partners we wanted to invite to share the content, and which partners we wanted to invite to participate in a more intimate way. Caring Across’ digital team developed a robust social media toolkit with the support of the Wayfarer team and shared it with partners the week prior to campaign launch, so there was time to engage with our allies and allow for new possibilities of partnerships to arise.

23 partner and ally organizations working on a variety of issues across the landscape of care and culture change ended up sharing the series and campaign, with a handful (Color of Change, The Arc, DREDF) participating in the campaign activations. Partners who shared the campaign included Times Up, The Arc, Endwell, Color of Change, Breakthrough, Storyline Partners, Pop Culture Collaborative, The Mask You Live In, Opportunity Agenda, Fair Play Life, Hand in Hand, Promundo, Duty Free, NDWA, Family Values at Work, PL+US, Be a Hero, PHI National, and Hilarity for Charity (Seth and Lauren Rogen’s organization).

Partners who shared the campaign

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EARNED MEDIA In order to leverage the series and campaign to build out a different facet of the narrative environment around care, we engaged a PR firm, Elle Communications, to work on getting earned media for the campaign. Although Caring Across has an experienced communications team in-house, given the collaboration with Wayfarer Studios, Justin Baldoni, and the rest of the cast, it was strategic to hire a PR firm that specialized in pop culture and entertainment. Wayfarer and Justin’s PR firm was focused on garnering press for Justin’s book Man Enough: Undefining my Masculinity around the same time, so Caring Across’ press team led on overall strategy and messaging and coordinated between the two PR firms, while Elle Communications focused on tactics, targets, and pitching.

Over a 6-week period, the campaign earned a total of 9 press hits in wide-reaching pop culture outlets such as Good Morning America, Parents Magazine, OXY, POPCULTURE, as well as The Hill and other outlets, garnering a total of 52,415,787 media impressions.

ABC NEWS — February 23, 2021

Former NFL player breaks down standards of masculinity Devon Still updates us on his daughter’s cancer battle and talks about his new series, “Man Enough to Care.”

Devon Still was interviewed on Good Morning America.

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Highlights included:

Good Morning America interview with Devon Still GM3, the official third hour of ABC’s national morning show Good Morning America, hosted by Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, interviewed former NFL player and cast member of Man Enough to Care, Devon Still. They talked to him about the series, his broader activism around care, and about fatherhood and redefining standards of masculinity. Elle Communications pitched GMA, and the Caring Across team prepped Devon with talking points and mock interview practice. The GM3 interview then sparked FOX5 New York, a New York City affiliate of FOX News TV, to reach out to Devon for a similar interview, where he discussed Man Enough as well as his podcast, and his thoughts on the challenges male caregivers experience during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. This was an extremely important press hit for the Man Enough to Care series since it brought the conversation about caregiving and masculinity to a very broad audience.

“One of the things I loved about this series is that Wayfarer studios and Caring Across Generations really created a safe space for men to really talk about the things that we struggle with, about just being caregivers.

I had no idea that about 40% of caregivers are male. So being able to talk about our struggles and share resources with one another is very important. The message I want to share with men out there that are caregivers is that vulnerability is the true strength...When you’re able to talk about these things, you’re able to uplift each other and gain the resources in order to make it through this.”

- Devon Still on GMA

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‘The Economy Cannot Function Without the Unpaid Labor of Mothers,’ a Parents Magazine interview with Justin Baldoni This piece discussed Justin’s inspiration for partnering with Caring Across Generations and Ai-jen to produce the Man Enough to Care series and his work to change attitudes about caregiving and masculinity. Parents Magazine is one of the country’s top parenting magazines, releasing content online and in print, reaching a total audience reach of 2,219,004.

Justin Baldoni on Caregiving: ‘The Economy Cannot Function Without the Unpaid Labor

“I would argue that being a caregiver is perhaps one of the most masculine things a man can be.”

- Justin Baldoni for Parents Magazine

‘A Love Letter to Male Caregivers‘, The Hill This piece in The Hill featured quotes from Ai-jen Poo, Justin Baldoni, and Nathan Kress. The Hill has a total audience reach of 23,224 and is one of the most read publications for national policymakers.

“This is a once-in-several-generations opportunity to reset our policies and our culture to better support families and caregivers who have been on the frontlines of this pandemic in so many ways…Caregiving is not some kind of individual or personal responsibility, where if you can’t it’s because of some personal failure on your part. This is a shared collective challenge that is in dire need of a public policy solution.”

- Ai-jen Poo for The Hill

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What helped secure press for the series and campaign, as per Elle Communications: • Tying the culmination of the series to National Caregivers Day on February 19th was helpful in securing earned media stories, as it was a great hook for editors to write about the series.

• Being able to offer talent and key names from the Man Enough to Care series — Justin, Ai-jen, Nathan, and Devon — to top-tier outlets was key for securing press.

• Being able to offer key statistics and personal stories from (male) caregivers in Caring Across’ network of family caregivers offered real-life connections for the editors to leverage as they communicated to their audiences. This helped garner a story in The 19th, as well as a conversation with TIME for a potential upcoming article. Additionally, all stories published utilized a few key data points and statistics provided by the Caring Across team, specifically the compelling statistic that approximately 40 percent of family caregivers in the U.S. are men.

Mandatory, an online publication for men, published an article about the series on National Caregivers Day.

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Goals, Objectives, & How We Did The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how essential care is to our economy and our everyday lives.

It has also brought many more people, including men, into the realization of the caregiving role they need to play in their families, how much more support is needed, and how insufficient, unsustainable, and inequitable the current systems and benefits are. The pandemic has also mainstreamed the idea that families do well when caregiving can be a collective effort, rather than the responsibility of one person (mostly falling on a female member of the family). We believe that families would thrive if our culture valued caregiving enough to build care teams and care squads (community care) that were then further supported by collective, systemic supports for care in the form of inclusive, transformative policy solutions (childcare supports, paid medical and family leave, and long-term supports and services).

Actor Nathan Kress, who cared for his toddler and his wife with endometriosis, invited male caregivers to share their stories of caregiving on social media.

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By spotlighting male caregivers and their stories, the Man Enough to Care video series and campaign targeted men and male-identifying people who consider themselves on the right side of social and moral issues — men who, after the Me Too movement, may have been involved in some re-imagining of their own masculinity. By publicly sharing and engaging with these videos, the campaign asked men to join the movement to build a culture of care: a culture in which the work of care is no longer invisible and under-valued and care is considered a strength — part of an updated, healthy sense of masculinity.

Beyond that, the campaign asked people to see caregiving as their issue, as everyone’s issue — as a pressing social issue that needs collective responsibility and a collective solution. Women were, of course, invited and encouraged to share their experiences with caregiving as well!

The ask: We invite men and male-identifying people who are a part of the growing number of male caregivers to identify themselves or those they know as caregivers and publicly name the essential, valuable, and skilled work they do using the hashtag #CareWithME.

The target audience: Men between the ages of 30-45 years, who are currently caregivers, are on the cusp of becoming caregivers, or have been so in the past, as well as men who see themselves as part of a care team.

The campaign far surpassed the goals that we had set for views, reach, engagement, and distribution across social media and digital platforms, earned media, and the participation of organizational partners.

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Man Enough to Care Campaign Goals: Challenge and contribute to shifting gendered attitudes about caregiving, especially amongst men.

Reach a new audience of millennial men and make caregiving visible and valued amongst this audience.

Generate engagement and conversation about caregiving on Man Enough’s social media platforms.

Caring Across’ Broader Objectives that This Campaign Directly Supported: In the immediate term, this campaign aims to make sure that caregivers, especially Sandwich Generation, BIPOC, and male caregivers, hear narratives that reflect their experiences and frame caregiving as a collective social responsibility within an anti-racist care infrastructure.

In the longer term, this campaign contributes towards building a culture of care in which care is valued, visible, and collective; and building a supported, powerful community of caregivers.

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CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES & HOW WE DID The campaign far surpassed the goals that Caring Across Generations and Man Enough had set for views, reach, engagement, and distribution across social media and digital platforms, earned media, and the participation of organizational partners. In addition to reaching new audiences with highquality, nuanced content about caregiving and masculinity, the topics that the Man Enough to Care series and campaign explored struck people as “new” and “important.” When we approached other movement organizations to partner with the campaign, share content, or co-host one of the events, they immediately agreed, noting that they felt the video series was beautiful and powerful. Here are the campaign objectives that Caring Across had laid out at the outset, and how the campaign did against those objectives:

Objective 1 The Man Enough to Care series should reach 100,000 people, predominantly men and male-identifying people, by March 19, 2021.

Outcomes Impressions: With over 82 million campaign impressions, the Man Enough to Care campaign reached (and continues to reach) audiences far beyond the Man Enough and Caring Across Generations ecosystems. [Additional information about the quantitative reach of the campaign is below.]

Engagement: With 36.9K overall engagements, the Man Enough to Care campaign effectively shared meaningful content and opened up a new and unique conversation about care and masculinity to people who had not engaged with this subject before.

Audience Growth • The Man Enough audiences, across all channels, saw a 12% increase (9K+ followers) from February 1 - February 28 as a result of the Man Enough to Care campaign.

• The Caring Across Generations audiences, across all channels, saw a 1.5% increase of 1,033 new followers as a result of the Man Enough to Care campaign.

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(continued from Objective 1 Outcomes) Audience demographics: It is important to note that while we reached a lot of new people who wouldn’t ordinarily see Caring Across’ digital content, via the 1) Man Enough platforms, Vox Media, and Reach TV, as well as 2) a growth in Caring Across’ digital and social audiences as a result of this campaign, based on the audience demographic information we have access to, we did not reach a lot of men and maleidentifying people. The majority of the series and campaign audience was female and female-identifying. Note: The demographic information we have is patchy. It does not include demographics for those who watched the videos on YouTube or who came to us via earned media. We also do not have audience demographic information for the influencers’ social media platforms (Zach Anner, Devon Still, Justin Baldoni, Nathan Kress), all of whom shared a lot of content and had a wide reach and deep engagement.

• Caring Across Generations: From the period of February 14 to March 16, the average follower on Caring Across’ Instagram was someone who identified as female in the 25-34 age range. This group made up the majority of interactions with Man Enough content over the time period. And although Caring Across’ Instagram grew by 42% during the Man Enough to Care campaign, the demographic makeup of the new audience remained the same as before.

Similarly on Facebook, during the Man Enough to Care reporting timeframe February 14 - March 14, the majority of the audience engaging with the content was women aged 65 and older, which is in line with Caring Across’ regular audience demographic. Over the course of the campaign, Facebook followers grew by 0.3% and maintained previous demographic breakdowns.

• Man Enough: The Man Enough platforms were the campaign’s primary means of reaching men and male-identifying people, but we learned that the audiences that engaged with the content on their platforms were also predominantly women (79% were women). Specifically, Man Enough’s Instagram and Twitter reach is 70% female, while on Facebook the breakdown is more evenly divided, with 55% female and 45% male. Additionally we know that their Instagram and Facebook audiences skew millennial and younger with 45% of the audience being between the ages of 18-24, and another 42% being between the ages of 25-34.

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Objective 2 One hundred men, 40% of whom are BIPOC, should self-identify as caregivers by March 19, 2021, as a result of the series and campaign.

Outcomes A central goal of this campaign was to reach caregivers, especially male-identifying caregivers, and invite them to engage with the content and share their stories. We received over 35 such stories organically, and, even weeks after the active campaign ended, both Caring Across and Man Enough were still receiving messages from people (mostly men) watching the series and engaging with the content in a vulnerable and open way. We do not have data about how people who submitted identify in terms of their race and ethnicity, making it difficult to weigh in on whether or not 40% are BIPOC. 78 people self-identified as caregivers or shouted out the caregivers and care workers in their lives in response to Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s video and twitter post that he shared on National Caregivers Day, as part of this campaign. [He used the campaign hashtag #CareWithME.]

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Quantitative Impact across Man Enough and Caring Across Generations’ Social Media Platforms through March 19th

GRAND TOTAL

338 Posts

|

82.02M Impressions

Owned Man Enough Channel

POSTS

IMPRESSIONS/VIEWS

ENGAGEMENT/LIKES

FOLLOW

TOTAL

84

1.02M

36.9K

87.8K

FACEBOOK

31

336.0K

26.9K

25.2K

5

47.7K

569

3.0K

46

639.7K

9.4K

59.3K

8

282.5K

18.4K

N/A

TWITTER INSTAGRAM INSTAGRAM TV

WEBSITE

6.5K Users

|

12.1K Page Views

Owned Caring Across Channels TOTAL FACEBOOK TWITTER INSTAGRAM + INSTAGRAM TV WEBSITE

517 Users

Tracked #CareWithME TWITTER

|

4K

1:03 Avg. Time

POSTS

IMPRESSIONS/VIEWS

ENGAGEMENT/LIKES

FOLLOW

142

728.1K

24.8K

68.5K

17

115.2K

17.3K

55.2K

105

603.5K

4.5K

11.2K

20

9.3K

3K

2.1K

615 Page Views

POSTS

|

|

4:20 Avg. Time

IMPRESSIONS

36M

REACH

USERS

SENTIMENT SCORE

22.2M

3K

89% Positive

(Influencers include: Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Nathan Kress, Ady Barkan, TIME’S Up)

ACROSS PLATFORMS

POSTS

IMPRESSIONS

REACH

INFLUENCERS

EST. MEDIA VALUE

686

51.1M

5.1M

6

$2.3 Million

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Additional Distribution and Reach Objectives & Their Outcomes Objective 3: The Man Enough series should be shared by 6 organizational partners by March 19, 2021.

Outcome: The series, campaign, and campaign events were shared by 23 organizational partners during launch week.

Objective 4: Three press articles about the Man Enough caregiving series should work to make caregiving visible to millennials by March 19, 2021, contributing to building out a 360° narrative environment for care and increasing the value of care in our culture.

Outcome: With the help of Elle Communications, the PR firm we hired, we had 9 press articles about the campaign, with a total of 52,415,787 media impressions.

77% of the media placements linked back to the Man Enough to Care campaign pages.

CAMPAIGN REACH IN CALIFORNIA During this campaign, Caring Across ran ads targeted to audiences in California, a priority state because of Caring Across’ upcoming work launching a Universal Family Care pilot program in a city in California in the near future.

In particular, the Black History Month Roundtable on February 23, 2021, performed well with the audiences in California, with Californians being the top viewers of this event, making up 26% of all views.

Over the course of the live event, many viewers engaged in the comments, sharing their experiences as family caregivers and lifting up what resonated with them. Jim Kelly, a former family caregiver from Los Angeles, was one particularly engaged commenter.

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The Black History Month Roundtable performed well with audiences in California, with Californians being the top viewers of this event, making up 26% of all views.

Given the importance of reaching a California-based audience, Caring Across ran targeted digital ads promoting the premiere of the video series. Here are some metrics for how those ads did: • • • • •

317,047 reach 365,512 impressions 43,712 engagements 11.96% result rate, with the goal of individuals watching the trailer for episode 1 in the post Cost per engagement was $0.02-$0.03, lower than the national average of $0.06 meaning we had more engagements for less money spent.

Additionally, the nationally targeted ads also reached people in California. They had the following reach: • • • •

2,704 reach 4,672 impressions 129 clicks 2.76% click-through rate, higher than the average rate of 0.89%

These metrics, especially the result rate and click-through rate, tell us that the video content resonated with a California-based audience, which is useful information as we start to think about designing the culture and communications content for the Universal Family Care pilot in California in 2022. Most significant was the demographic information for the ads targeted at people in California. Unlike on

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our national ads and social platforms where the people who engaged were predominantly female, in California, we had a breakdown of 41% men viewing the ads and 59% women. Women ages 25-44 made up the majority audience for these ads, but comparisons show they also performed quite well with Californian men between ages 25 and 44, who were our target audience for the content. As Caring Across begins to think about state-specific culture change projects, information like this is going to help shape the specificity of targeting campaigns and projects at the local level.

In California, we had a breakdown of 41% men viewing the ads... perform[ing] quite strongly with Californian men between ages 25 and 44, who were our target audience for the content.

QUALITATIVE IMPACT TOWARDS TRANSFORMING CULTURAL NORMS & BUILDING CULTURAL POWER Here are some highlights of the qualitative impact that this series and campaign had that we believe has strongly contributed to shifting cultural norms around care and building cultural power in favor of caregivers, and will continue to do so in the medium- and long-term:

Using Culture to Change Culture While the campaign may not have reached as many men as intended, when men did interact with the video series, campaign content, and events, there was a quality and depth of engagement that was significant. Many of the men that commented and shared their experience of caregiving seemed to be doing so and identifying as caregivers for the first time. The vulnerability and openness with which Justin, Devon, Nathan, Zach, and Robert talked about caregiving and masculinity in the series seemed to move viewers and audiences to be similarly honest and vulnerable. The unique and specific content

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of the series seemed to set off a chain reaction of authenticity and revelation that was contagious: from the episode focused on vulnerability to people publicly sharing how much the videos moved them, to the organic and joyful chat between Justin Baldoni and Nathan Kress about parenting and pandemic haircuts on Instagram Live. From the Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s communications team being thrilled for him to participate in the campaign on National Caregivers Day, to the outpouring of stories from caregivers who felt seen and heard by Mr. Emhoff’s message thanking caregivers. And on and on.

The Man Enough to Care series opened up a conversation about masculinity from a place of boldness, care, joy, and authenticity and successfully created a moment for caregivers to be visible and valued in the midst of a pandemic that has been brutal for families, especially for caregivers and the people they care for.

When men did interact with the video series, campaign content, and events, there was a quality and depth of engagement that was significant.

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The Man Enough to Care series opened up a conversation about masculinity from a place of boldness, care, joy, and authenticity and successfully created a moment for caregivers to be visible and valued.

Watched a segment on #CareWithMe just now & had a breakdown.

Those videos touched a fragile place in my heart

Building Cultural Power by Organizing Cultural Producers As an outcome of this partnership, Wayfarer Studios, recently named by Fast Company as one of the most innovative production companies in Hollywood, committed to weaving caregiving into their storytelling work as much as possible, moving forward. At the end of the campaign, the Wayfarer team told Caring Across that they deeply understood the centrality that care and caregiving needs to have in our culture, and are committed to centering and uplifting caregivers, recipients of care, and their

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diverse stories and experiences in their productions. Through this close collaboration, we effectively organized people who hold the reins of cultural production, Justin Baldoni and his production company, thus building power for our issue and our people. Even in the two months since the campaign ended, Justin was invited to speak about “Valuing Care” on a panel with Ai-jen, organized by the Economic Opportunities Program. This issue is now top of mind for Justin and Wayfarer — Justin is associated with care and masculinity; they’re bought in and engaged and eager to continue to bring these issues to light through other projects.

From Influencer to National Spokesperson Another transformational relationship that Caring Across built through this project was with Devon Still, the former NFL player who is featured in the series. Devon’s entrypoint into the issue of care has been through caring for his daughter when she had stage 4 cancer. When we met him, he was already an advocate for parents of children with chronic and serious illnesses. However, after becoming aware of the broader issues of caregiving and context of long-term care through the production and distribution process for the series (he worked closely with Caring Across’ communications team and PR agency), he has started including the broader context of care and the need for care infrastructure in his public speaking and advocacy work. During the campaign, he told Ai-jen and Ishita that he wants to become a national spokesperson for Caring Across Generations. He will be formally joining Caring Across’ Creative Council of influencers later this year and already spoke at the Care Can’t Wait summit in April 2021.

Devon Still, a former NFL player and caregiver for his daughter when she had stage 4 cancer, told Ai-jen and Ishita that he wants to become a national spokesperson for Caring Across Generations.

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Takeaways & Learnings We Need Transformational Partnerships Rather than Transactional Ones Relationship-building sits at the heart of successful organizing and successful partnerships. This campaign was built on a relationship of shared values, respect, and trust that began with Justin and Ai-jen, and extended to the two teams, the cast, and the additional partners and influencers who were engaged as part of the campaign. Once both teams were aligned and inspired by their mutual values and goals, then everyone was willing to work hard and put forward their energy, creativity, and the best of their resources. The nature of the partnership meant that it subverted the traditional dynamic of client and vendor or Hollywood studio and social justice organization and replaced it with a mutually beneficial, transformational relationship that will last far beyond this campaign.

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The Messenger Matters While the series and campaign didn’t reach a high percentage of men and male-identifying people (as far as we could track), it engendered deep engagement from the millennial men who did engage, because 1) the content was nuanced and high-quality, and 2) it was delivered by the right messenger.

The campaign was led by Man Enough and primarily in their brand, which meant that the content and campaign about masculinity and caregiving was produced by a studio and artist that were already known for their work pushing the bounds of masculinity.

Cutting Through Media Noise is Key An important piece of feedback that the Elle Communications team received from some entertainment publications was that editors were unable to cover the series because it was streaming on YouTube rather than a major platform or network. This is important to keep in mind for future content that we are seeding or co-producing and hoping for attention and coverage in the entertainment media.

We Need Bold, Thoughtful, and Intentional Storytelling Rather Than Storytelling That is Safe or Formulaic The time, thought, and intention that went into the prep, script, post-production, and campaign materials meant that in a short amount of screen time, the five videos spanned not only a wide range of caregiving experiences, but they went deep, highlighting the ways in which caregiving is universal while also deeply affected by the layers of identity such as race, gender, class, gender identity, and ability.

Vulnerability is Powerful and Specificity is Engaging The three ancillary events that we organized demonstrated that especially in the context of pandemic fatigue, it is important that virtual events feel structured yet organic, and call on participants to dig into their life experiences in a way that feels deep and vulnerable. The specificity of the TweetChat on February 17th made it feel like that conversation centered the disability community and was formulated to hear from disabled men in all their honesty. Similarly, the Facebook live conversation on February 23rd was by and for black men to talk about their caregiving experiences. The Man Enough to Care video series touched on specifics of masculinity and care from a first-person perspective in such a way that it easily enabled further conversations that were specific and meaningful.

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We Need to Build Rigorous Tools for Measuring and Evaluating Culture Change Campaigns This video series and campaign was built on a decade of experimentation, relationship-building, thought leadership, research, and learnings. Even at the end of a successful culture change campaign like this one, we know that there’s still so much we have to learn about how to measure whether a culture change project achieved its intended impact and how deep it went. It is challenging to measure attitudinal change, especially when distribution and outreach are dispersed across multiple platforms that you have varying degrees of control over and access to. We need new, rigorous systems for monitoring and measuring what happens when people are deeply moved by digital content and how that affects their attitude and behaviour, in that moment and over time.

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Man Enough to Care Production & Campaign Credits Caring Across Generations Production and Campaign Team

Wayfarer & Man Enough Production and Campaign Team

Ai-jen Poo: Co-founder and Executive Director Ishita Srivastava: Culture Change Director Sarah Vitti: Culture Change Manager Katie O’Connell: Digital Director Matthew Cain: Digital Consultant Janet Kim: Communications Director Ja-Rei Wang: Media Relations Manager Aisha Adkins: Constituency Organizer

Wayfarer Studios

Elle Communications: PR agency (hired by Caring Across Generations)

Justin Baldoni: Chairman of Wayfarer Studios, Host of Man Enough to Care Tarah Malhotra-Feinberg: SVP, Man Enough Brandy Cole: VP, Marketing Matt Branham: Writer Liz Plank: Masculinity Expert, Man Enough Consultant Kate Parkin: Marketing and Communications Manager Josh Snyder: Video Editor Mitz Toskovic: Chief of Staff

Chukbox (social media agency) Charlene Asuncion Taylor Wang Kelsey Estrada Zachary Dodge

Crispy Chicken (creative/design agency) Ricardo Marquez Mina Park

Jonesworks (PR agency) Jennifer Abel

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About Caring Across Generations Since 2011, Caring Across Generations has been building a movement of all ages and backgrounds to transform the way we care. As the leading intersectional nonprofit and campaign in the space, Caring Across Generations works to transform our culture of care by getting people to recognize and value care — and the emotional, financial and personal sacrifices that come with it — as a collective responsibility. Caring Across Generations develops innovative policies starting at the state level to make quality care more accessible and these policies then fuel campaigns where field partners educate communities, organize activists and pressure elected officials. We elevate stories of caregivers and we shift culture to value care and embrace aging so the policies we fight for can take root and we reach our ultimate goal: a world where everyone can live and age with dignity, and caregivers are respected and supported. Learn more at www.caringacross.org.

About Man Enough Man Enough is a movement founded on the belief that by undefining traditional roles and traits of masculinity, men will be able to realize their potential as humans and their capacity for connection. Man Enough transcends the limitations of media to create authentic community as the cornerstone of this reimagination of masculinity. With bold vulnerability and brave transparency, the movement combines the personal stories and collective experiences of men from many backgrounds as we aim to build bridges from our heads to our hearts, and between one another. Learn more at www.manenough.com.

Man Enough

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Caring Across Generations 45 Broadway, Suite 320 New York, NY 10006 www.caringacross.org @CaringAcrossGenerations @CaringAcrossGen @CaringAcrossGen Contact: ishita@caringacross.org