Ken: We've been working with Prudential for I guess a year now, and when we sat down with
the client, we talked about what it was that we wanted to do with them, which was tackle
the big challenges in society and to deal with it in a macro level.
We're not dealing with the fake facade but we're dealing with the big issue that is facing
all of us.
Linda: Move on might be a good word to exchange for change.
It's always moving on.
Ken: So we got 200 people, 250 people around the country to send us photos of their first
day of retirement.
Linda: It's hard to make decisions about yourself all of a sudden when you've been making them
with somebody else for 35 years.
Ken: We are fortunate enough to have the client that saw the value of the photo part of this
project where we go find all of these photos, and we put them online, and we had a commercial
about that.
But also it gave us the leverage to say, "That's cool, but these people that we get these photos
from they're so interesting.
We need to go farther."
But the challenge is in the digital age where we live in where people can skip things, they
can fast forward things and just be bored and have a short attention span is how you
get them to stop and spend time with them?
And, for us, the most key approach was to be honest.
Linda: I had a wonderful, wonderful happy marriage, and I was well loved.
And so many people don't have that.
Ken: If you really have a story that's told really directly and simply, and you get to
know somebody, it's hard to hit stop.
It's hard to turn away from that story if you really start to like them.
And with Linda, you so early on just by the timber of her voice and the way she has that
optimism and a frailty at the same time.
Linda: Hey, buddy, what's out there?
Tom didn't leave very much, but he left me a little money, and I bought Deacon with the
last of the money.
He doesn't talk back, but he looks at me like he understands.
Ken: I get choked up thinking about moments of Linda, but I hope it's an optimistic story
in the end.
And I hope people are left at the end of that with feeling that she's gonna get by, and
she's gonna be okay.
And I have no doubt about that.
It was infectious, her optimism.
Linda: Day one.
First day of my retirement.
First day I've never had to answer to anyone for anything except Deacon.
Ken: After that day, she started a blog, a retirement blog because of that effect of
us visiting her.
And so every couple of days, she'll add a new thing.
And she just wants to say, "Okay, you guys saw my day one.
I'm gonna take it from here, and I'm gonna show the rest of my retirement."
And our plans are also to go back for day 1000 or day 10000 and see how the people are
doing as well.
The environment of advertising has changed from it used to always be here and out.
"We have something to say, we're going to put it out, and that's our job.
It's one direction."
And obviously today, that is a much more interactive direction.
For us, this is just step one.
I think Day One will continue and there will be different versions of that.
And we hope to have that be that almost equals retirement.
That's a version of retirement.
That's just something that can be there and can grow in different forms and become a national
holiday almost.
But the great thing about advertising or any kind of communication is can this one thing
you do last longer?
Can that one rock that goes into the pond, how long can those ripples go on?
How long can it affect somebody?