Full messaging strategy and on-set production management for a TV campaign on CBS that put a local home care agency in front of every family in Southern Maine.
Who We Worked With
Amada Senior Care of Southern Maine
Partners
Frankie Day-Lyon, with collaborator Kate Murphy of CBS13/AMP
Services
Research & Strategy, Brand & Campaign
Project Fun Fact
Ellie the golden retriever stole the segment
From messaging strategy to TV set — how a local senior care agency landed on CBS.
Peter Light runs Amada Senior Care of Southern Maine the way you'd hope someone runs a company that sends caregivers into your grandmother's home: with warmth, humor, and the kind of attention that can't be faked. He's a former teacher and financial advisor who built an agency where birthdays get celebrated, the office dog — a golden retriever named Ellie — has her own fan base on social media, and a caregiver who noticed veterans weren't accessing their benefits got promoted to care coordinator so she could fix it.
The problem wasn't the story. The story was great. The problem was getting it in front of the right people, in the right format, with messaging that would actually land.
Working with our friend & media collaborator, Kate Murphy (Sales and Marketing Specialist, CBS 13/AMP Media), we partnered with Kate on a campaign with the Inside Maine's Best Employers series. Our role: figuring out what to say, how to say it, and what would resonate with two very different audiences at the same time — families looking for trustworthy home care for aging parents, and caregivers looking for meaningful work with an employer who actually values them.
The answer was belonging.
Not clinical credentials (though Amada has those — they're the only agency in Maine with an A+ rating from the Home Care Standards Bureau). Not service menus or insurance jargon. The campaign led with culture: what it feels like to work at Amada, and what that culture means for the people they care for. The matchmaking metaphor that opens the segment — Peter comparing his agency to a matchmaking service, "just swap the roses for pudding cups" — that's messaging strategy at work. It's specific, it's warm, it's memorable, and it communicates the core value proposition without ever sounding like a pitch.
We collaborated on set for every shoot — the storytelling beats, shooting footage of Ellie and clients in their homes, and making sure every frame served the strategy. The result was a 2:30 television segment and a full feature write-up that aired on CBS 13 as part of Kate's Inside Maine's Best Employers series.
The segment tells three stories in under three minutes: Peter's vision for caregiving as a calling, Christine Torres's journey from caregiver to care coordinator (now connecting Maine veterans to free and low-cost care through the VA Community Care Network), and the workplace culture that makes caregivers stay. It ends where it started — with pudding cups and people.
The campaign didn't stop at television. Kate's team paired the segment with a Facebook ad campaign for caregiver recruitment, and the return on investment has been quietly extraordinary. With 854 link clicks in the first month — breakeven came when just 1/3 of 1% of those clicks turned into caregivers. The entire campaign — TV, sponsored news article, and Facebook ad spend — has easily paid for itself, and done so in a short time.
For a home care agency competing against chains with bigger marketing budgets, getting on television, the news, and Facebook with a story this specific and this human is the kind of thing that changes the game. Families remember it. Caregivers share it. And Peter's phone rings.
