American Family Insurance Honors Community Dreamers in 2024
American Family Insurance's 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign is a digital and film initiative, created by agency partner Elite Media, that honors three disaster-response organizations — Portland Fire and Rescue, Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay, and the American Family Response Team in Blair, Nebraska — through a long-form video and a thirty-second cutdown distributed digitally and online across the United States in December 2024.
The campaign marks the third consecutive year that American Family Insurance has partnered with TIME to present the Dreamer of the Year Award, a recognition designed to celebrate individuals and organizations that protect, restore, and champion the dreams of others while inspiring communities to reimagine what resilience looks like. By anchoring the 2024 edition to the theme of natural disasters, the brand deliberately moves the conversation from aspiration in the abstract to aspiration under pressure — honoring those who rebuild communities when catastrophe strips them bare. The honorees were announced via a newsroom release published on December 12, 2024, as reported by Newsroom Amfam, with additional industry coverage appearing in MediaPost on December 14, 2024.
In the United States, the campaign ran across digital video, branded content, advertorial placements, a dedicated landing page, and social promotion through Meta, with an NBC television spot and a live poetic performance also forming part of the broader media footprint, according to the Shorty Awards entry for the program. Elite Media, American Family Insurance's creative agency partner, developed both the long-form and short-form video assets, with TIME's production infrastructure providing the journalistic gravitas that distinguishes this effort from conventional insurance advertising. The Clapboard Score for the 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting solid strategic coherence and media delivery that exceeded guarantees, set against creative execution that occupies familiar branded-content territory rather than breaking genuinely new ground.
American Family Insurance operates in one of the most competitive and commoditized categories in the United States. The US property and casualty insurance market reached approximately one trillion dollars in direct premiums written in 2024, growing at a rate of around nine and a half percent year over year, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Within that landscape, brand differentiation is structurally difficult — coverage products are broadly similar, pricing is regulated by state, and switching costs are falling as comparison platforms proliferate. American Family Insurance responds to this environment by investing in a values-led creative platform rather than competing on price messaging alone.
The strategic logic of the Dreamer of the Year franchise begins with the brand's long-running "Insure Carefully. Dream Fearlessly." platform, which was launched nationally in 2016 by BBDO New York and included a Super Bowl spot featuring Jennifer Hudson, as reported by MediaPost. That platform established the emotional territory American Family Insurance occupies: the insurer as enabler of human ambition, not merely a financial backstop against loss. The 2024 campaign extends that lineage by fusing it with the brand's newer "Life's Better" campaign, according to mediapost.com, grounding aspiration explicitly in disaster recovery and community service.
Choosing natural-disaster responders as the 2024 honorees is a strategically precise decision. Competitors such as State Farm and Allstate have both run cause-adjacent advertising in the United States, but the Dreamer of the Year's co-branding with TIME lends the effort editorial credibility that pure advertising cannot purchase. The TIME partnership transforms what might otherwise read as a corporate social responsibility segment into a journalistically framed narrative — one that reaches TIME's existing audience of news-attentive, civically engaged consumers in the US market at precisely the moment when climate-driven disaster events are generating sustained public attention.
Elite Media led creative development for the 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign, with Chris Crawford serving as Chief Creative Officer and Jindai Joseph as Executive Creative Director, according to the campaign's production credits. Mo Alsadi served as Art Director, with Kecia Paredes directing account management and Jacqueline Crockwell overseeing project management, all at Elite Media. On the TIME production side, Jeff Smith served as Executive Producer, with Marissa Malyn as Director of Branded Production, John Hirsch and Dennis O'Fallon as Producers, Dom Savio as Director of Photography, Tiana Cantu as Production Manager, and Tony Dilorenzo as Director of Post Production, per the credited production roster.
The creative approach positions American Family Insurance as witness rather than protagonist. The long-form video follows a documentary logic — field-shot footage of the three honored groups, Portland Fire and Rescue, Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay, and the American Family Response Team in Blair, Nebraska, doing the actual work of disaster response and community rebuilding. Dom Savio's cinematography grounds the piece in the visual grammar of serious editorial documentary, a deliberate choice that reinforces the TIME editorial partnership and signals to viewers that what they are watching is observation, not staging. The thirty-second cutdown distills this into a compressed emotional argument suitable for pre-roll and social environments.
The Shorty Awards entry for the campaign documents additional creative executions beyond the core video assets, including an NBC television spot, a live performance by a poet, and advertorial content integrated into TIME's own publishing environment, according to shortyawards.com. This multi-format approach reflects a content architecture where each asset serves a distinct role in the media funnel — the long-form piece building emotional depth, the cutdown driving reach, the advertorial lending contextual legitimacy, and the live performance generating shareable cultural moments in the United States.
No independently audited third-party performance data for the 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign has been published in mainstream media. The figures below are drawn from the campaign's Shorty Awards submission, which documents performance metrics as reported by the campaign team.
The overall campaign delivered fifteen point nine million impressions against a guaranteed ten point eight million, according to the Shorty Awards entry — a delivery rate that substantially exceeded the contracted floor. The branded video component alone generated five point six million impressions against a five point three million guarantee, with a click-through rate of zero point zero nine percent, sitting within the cited benchmark range of zero point zero six to zero point one percent, per the Shorty Awards submission. The campaign generated nearly one hundred and seventy-four thousand clicks at a blended click-through rate of one point zero nine percent, according to the same source. The standout channel by engagement was Meta social promotion, which delivered ten point three million impressions against a guaranteed five point five million and achieved a click-through rate of one point six four percent — more than eight times the cited benchmark of zero point two zero percent — according to the Shorty Awards entry.
These numbers tell a coherent story about audience receptiveness: the disaster-recovery framing and the emotional weight of the three honorees — Portland Fire and Rescue, Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay, and the American Family Response Team in Blair, Nebraska — generated interaction rates that significantly outpaced category norms in paid social environments in the United States. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects that structural overdelivery, while acknowledging that the creative format itself — branded documentary co-produced with a media partner — is now an established genre rather than a novel one.
The 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign is a digital and film initiative by American Family Insurance, created by Elite Media in partnership with TIME. It honors Portland Fire and Rescue, Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay, and the American Family Response Team in Blair, Nebraska for their disaster-response and community-rebuilding work across the United States.
American Family Insurance honored three organizations in 2024. Portland Fire and Rescue, Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay, and the American Family Response Team in Blair, Nebraska were selected for their efforts protecting and restoring communities in the face of natural disasters, as announced via newsroom.amfam.com in December 2024.
Elite Media created the 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign. Elite Media serves as American Family Insurance's creative agency partner. Chris Crawford acted as Chief Creative Officer and Jindai Joseph as Executive Creative Director. TIME handled production, with Jeff Smith as Executive Producer and Dom Savio as Director of Photography.
The campaign exceeded its guarantees substantially. It delivered fifteen point nine million impressions against a ten point eight million guarantee. Meta social drove ten point three million impressions against a five point five million guarantee at a one point six four percent click-through rate, far above the zero point two zero percent benchmark, according to the Shorty Awards submission.
American Family Insurance and TIME have partnered on the Dreamer of the Year Award for three consecutive years as of 2024. The award recognizes individuals or organizations that protect, restore, and champion community dreams. The 2024 edition focused specifically on natural-disaster response, honoring three US-based organizations for their frontline work.
The 2024 Dreamer of the Year campaign sits within American Family Insurance's longstanding "Insure Carefully. Dream Fearlessly." platform, launched nationally in 2016 by BBDO New York, and connects to the newer "Life's Better" campaign, according to mediapost.com. Together these platforms position American Family Insurance as an enabler of human ambition across the United States.
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