Ancestry showcased its ability to uncover the family histories of Black Americans with a moving, long-form film with widespread digital distribution.
Objective:
Ancestry is the leader in helping people discover the richness and depth of their family's history through DNA testing and genealogical research. Naturally, the target audience for such a service is universal. However, many Black Americans face challenges as knowledge of their family's history and origins was unjustly and brutally erased due to slavery. Consequently, many in the Black community believe the hurdles are too great to make many meaningful family history discoveries.
Recently, Ancestry digitized — and made searchable — over 3.5 million documents from the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil War-era federal agency established to help formerly enslaved people make the transition from slavery to citizenship.
For the first time, these records allow people to easily research their ancestors' lives before 1870, giving families a more complete picture of their past.
To showcase the Ancestry brand promise of "bringing families closer together," the campaign's objective was to create an integrated brand awareness campaign to attract new, diverse audiences and increase site traffic and product consideration. Ancestry measured this effort through a custom brand lift study, along with increases in visits to the Ancestry Black Family History landing page where the collection of Freedmen's Bureau and Freedman's Bank records could be accessed.
Target Audience:
The campaign was targeted at Black Americans, who previously faced challenges in learning about their family history.
Creative Strategy:
Ancestry needed to tell a powerful and culturally relevant story that would resonate with all Americans. Within that story, the campaign needed to speak directly to diverse audiences to dispel product misconceptions and highlight the discoveries Ancestry could unlock for all. To do this, Ancestry showcased the impact of the Freedmen's Bureau Records through the story of Hawkins Wilson.
Sold away from his family as a boy, a newly freed Hawkins Wilson wrote the Freedmen's Bureau desperately seeking to reunite with his family. Those letters were never delivered and his story, like many others, was suspended in time — until now.
By tracing the lineage from Hawkins to his living descendants today, as well as those of Hawkins's lost relatives, Ancestry was able to tell their ancestor's incredible journey, and reunite a family torn apart by slavery.
Anchored by a launch around the Juneteenth national holiday, the campaign media strategy leveraged digital, social media, and streaming platforms to drive buzz and awareness around an important cultural moment, resulting in earned coverage across top-tier broadcast morning shows, podcasts, general news, entertainment, and Black culture and lifestyle outlets.
Context:
Ancestry's recent digitization of Freedmen's Bureau and Freedman's Bank records was groundbreaking. The housed information had been in physical form for over 150 years, making it very difficult to archive. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of PBS's Finding Your Roots put it, "Ancestry's commitment to digitize culturally significant records of our Black ancestors is an important step in the right direction for our community to reclaim its collective history, once thought lost, but now being found."
This campaign showed Ancestry's commitment to addressing the challenges and barriers of access to records that many Black Americans face due to the legacy of slavery. By telling this story, Ancestry shined a light on a story of lost connections and a family reunited while showcasing what's possible with Ancestry.
Overall Campaign Execution:
To tell this story, Ancestry partnered with Paramount to create a documentary full of hope and resilience, showcasing the impact one family history discovery can have on an entire community that has faced many roadblocks in understanding their past. Launching on Juneteenth, the film gave contextual alignment around a pivotal moment for greater understanding of Black history.
Ancestry and Paramount created A Dream Delivered: The Lost Letters of Hawkins Wilson. This 30-minute documentary followed descendants of Hawkins Wilson as host Anthony Anderson (of the program Black-ish), historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith revealed his remarkable story, culminating in the emotional reunion of a family torn apart by slavery. By joining their journey, audiences were able to empathize with the struggle many Black Americans face when trying to uncover their family history, while simultaneously discovering Ancestry's unparalleled ability to help bring families together.
Ancestry and Paramount collaborated to execute a strategic distribution and promotional plan that gave the project a major relevant launch moment on Juneteenth and sustained awareness throughout the campaign on digital, social media, and streaming platforms.
On Juneteenth, the film premiered across CBS News, YouTube, and digital platforms, along with a CBSNews livestream on Paramount+ and PlutoTV. Teasers and trailers for the film ran across CBS News, MTV, BET, and VH1's linear and social platforms, along with an outdoor billboard in Times Square.
Ancestry and Paramount also created a series of social editorial content focused on the importance of Juneteenth, while MTV released a Need to Know episode that featured the film's genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith and Hawkins' descendant Kelly Dixon-Tealer as they discussed the importance of Black history.
Throughout the Juneteenth weekend, the film received editorial coverage including appearances from film host Anthony Anderson on TODAY, GMA, and CBS Mornings. This coverage was further amplified by influencer collaborations across major social platforms.
Over the following six weeks, promotion for the film continued across all platforms along with sponsorships on Paramount+ and PlutoTV.
Mobile Execution:
While none of the $2 million campaign budget was specifically targeted to mobile, nearly 25 percent of campaign impressions and over 50 percent of film views came via mobile devices.
Ancestry's documentary A Dream Delivered: The Lost Letters of Hawkins Wilson generated awareness with over 1.8 million film views across social platforms alone. Across digital platforms, Ancestry saw campaign creative driving strong engagement with a 70 percent higher click-through rate over concurrently running creative.
Press coverage for the film over the Juneteenth weekend included marquee coverage on The Today Show, CBS Mornings, and Good Morning America, along with social media amplification of each. Additional press support included a People.com feature story, a feature in The Washington Post, and a USA Today syndicated story and trailer coverage.
Overall, the campaign generated nearly two billion impressions across all platforms and coverage, including over 50 million earned social impressions.
The campaign drove lifts in Ancestry consideration, seen through an 800 percent increase in site traffic to Ancestry's Black History page and a nearly two-fold increase in the time spent on-page.
Digital campaign promotion accounted for over 25 percent of attributed non-registered site traffic, despite these tactics not directly driving to Ancestry.com — demonstrating the impact of the film creative. Additionally, a custom Meta brand lift study, specifically targeting African American audiences, proved this impact in consideration among a priority audience, with a 13.9-point lift for Ancestry as "a brand you would consider buying from." These lifts were further reinforced via a custom Dynata brand study that showed a 23 percent increase in consideration.
This campaign showcased the impact that branded content can have when both creative and the media strategy are built around relevance and the overall consumer experience. By using long-form content to tell this important story, Ancestry was able to find new media real estate across streaming platforms to reinforce brand messaging. Combined with an authentic launch around Juneteenth, this strategy was extremely well received by audiences, generating a favorable social sentiment that exceeded 90 percent.
