“A Dream Delivered” is a long-form video/TV production by Ancestry, a for-profit genealogy company. The narrative documentary explores the genealogical research and digitization of Civil War-era documents that Ancestry took on. They digitized over 3.5 million documents. During the process, the company discovered letters written by Hawkins Wilson, a former enslaved man, trying to find his sisters, whom he’d been separated from. Through their lineage and ancestral tracing based on DNA samples gathered from their customers, Ancestry was able to find the descendants of Hawkins Wilson and reunite them for the first time in their lives. The appeal that evoked an emotional response was compassion, a sense of social responsibility, and a sense of novelty, given Ancestry’s unique capability to process human DNA samples to find connections to the past.
The objectives of the ad/long-form production for TV were primarily to entertain and inform viewers through a compelling narrative and documentary style. The film was viewed over 2.7 million times. Ancestry, as a company, succeeds because customers pay to have their DNA samples assessed and linked to others in its database, in the hopes that their own lineage and history might be uncovered. Because Ancestry found such a compelling story to create a film around, presumably, viewers of the film would be more likely to purchase Ancestry’s services and products.
The campaign’s target market was African Americans, likely in their 30s to 50s. However, I believe the film could be appreciated by any American. As a result of the ad, there was a 23% increase in Ancestry consideration among African Americans and an 8x increase in traffic to Ancestry’s Black History page.
The ad wants the audience to consider using Ancestry to trace their family history. If the action is taken, the audience member will benefit from discovering links to their ancestors and, potentially, to long-lost relatives. These benefits are inherent in the value proposition of the product and service Ancestry provides. Unlocking untold stories and discovering customers’ ties to the past can help each person understand their place in the world and where they came from.
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