American Family Insurance Honors Direct Relief as 2025 Dreamer of the Year
American Family Insurance's 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign is a digital and film initiative, created by Elite Media, that honors Direct Relief for its humanitarian wildfire relief response across Los Angeles, positioning the insurer as a protector of community dreams rather than a transactional financial product.
Now in its fourth consecutive year, the Dreamer of the Year award is presented by American Family Insurance in partnership with TIME's Person of the Year franchise — a co-branding arrangement that elevates the insurer's social purpose narrative onto one of journalism's most recognisable annual platforms, as reported by mediapost.com. The 2025 honoree, Direct Relief, is a humanitarian organisation that mobilised rapidly after Los Angeles wildfires began devastating the region on January 7, 2025, according to directrelief.org. The fires represented one of the most destructive wildfire events in Los Angeles history, and Direct Relief's response became the human anchor of this campaign's storytelling.
In the United States, the campaign was published in December 2025 and runs digitally and online, comprising two media assets: a long-form video and a thirty-second film. Creative direction comes from Elite Media, American Family Insurance's established creative agency partner, with the work designed to live in digital and film environments rather than traditional broadcast channels. The campaign's tagline ecosystem draws on the brand's established positioning — Insure carefully, Dream Fearlessly — translating insurance's protective function into the language of aspiration and resilience. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 56 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of a well-worn cause-narrative format against a genuinely powerful subject.
American Family Insurance operates in one of the most contested advertising environments in the United States. State Farm holds an estimated 18.2% share of the US personal-lines market, according to repairerdrivennews.com, while GEICO and Berkshire Hathaway command an estimated 13.1% of the US auto insurance market and Progressive holds an estimated 12.3%, per the same source. Against competitors whose advertising strategies lean heavily on humour, price comparison, and character-driven brand mascots, American Family Insurance has developed a consistent counter-position: emotionally resonant, documentary-inflected storytelling that foregrounds communities rather than products.
The Dreamer of the Year series, which launched in December 2022 with a campaign honouring Donnel Baird, founder and CEO of BlocPower, represents a deliberate multi-year investment in this positioning, as reported by mediapost.com. The 2023 edition honoured Syd Kitson and Babcock Ranch, with Elite Media described at that time as American Family's long-time creative agency partner, per campaignlive.com. By 2025, the fourth iteration of the campaign, the brand has established a recognisable annual narrative rhythm tied to TIME's editorial calendar — a structural choice that generates earned media and cultural adjacency that paid placements alone cannot replicate.
The strategic rationale sharpens further when considered alongside American Family Insurance's own financial position. The company reported total revenue of $19.5 billion in 2025, down from $20.0 billion in 2024, and recorded a 5.6% decline in direct written premium in the same period, according to reporting attributed to the company's financial disclosures as cited by reel360.com. In this context, purpose-led brand advertising functions not merely as goodwill signalling but as a retention and differentiation tool in a market where product parity is high and switching costs are low. The wildfire crisis in Los Angeles gave the 2025 campaign a subject of immediate public salience in the United States, connecting the brand's promise of protection to a real and widely covered disaster.
Elite Media shapes the 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign around Direct Relief's wildfire relief work in Los Angeles, deploying a long-form documentary format alongside a thirty-second film to carry the emotional weight of the story across different viewing contexts. The creative approach is consistent with the series' established grammar: real people, real consequences, and a brand presence that remains deliberately subordinate to the subject's own testimony and actions.
Creative leadership on the campaign is drawn from Elite Media's senior team, as documented by reel360.com and Little Black Book. Chris Crawford serves as Chief Creative Officer, with Gati Curtis as President and Jindai Joseph as Executive Creative Director. Art direction is handled by Mo Alsadi, with Kecia Paredes as Account Director and Donna McLean as Media Strategy Director. On the client side, American Family Insurance's Enterprise Chief Marketing Officer Sherina Smith oversees the brand's marketing function, with Vice President of Marketing Colleen Orani, Senior Marketing Specialist Nick Baillies, VP of Communications and Community Engagement Yasir Kamal, and Media Marketing Manager Nancy Chang all credited to the campaign, per reel360.com.
The long-form asset allows the campaign to operate as a short documentary, giving Direct Relief's story room to develop beyond the compression that a thirty-second spot demands. This dual-format strategy — a hallmark of the Dreamer of the Year series since the 2023 edition produced films in formats including a two-minute-fifteen-second cut, a thirty-second spot, and a fifteen-second spot, as reported by campaignlive.com — ensures the creative work functions across both brand-building and performance-oriented digital placements in the United States. The work runs exclusively in digital and online environments, a distribution choice that concentrates the campaign's reach among audiences who engage with long-form content and documentary-style storytelling rather than traditional linear television viewers.
Direct Relief distributed more than $12 million in financial and material aid over six months following the Los Angeles wildfires and supported 65 community organisations, according to directrelief.org. These figures anchor the campaign's creative claims in verified humanitarian outcomes, giving the work a factual foundation that separates it from cause-marketing efforts built on vaguer social commitments.
The campaign received a Bronze Telly Award in the General–Brand Partnership category at the 2025 Telly Awards, with Elite Media named as entrant and American Family Insurance as client, per tellyawards.com. The Telly Awards recognition confirms the campaign's standing within the professional advertising community in the United States and validates the brand partnership structure — American Family Insurance alongside TIME — as a creative and commercial framework that industry juries find credible and distinctive.
No broader verified performance data for the 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign, including reach figures, brand lift metrics, or conversion data, is publicly available beyond the YouTube engagement indicators associated with the campaign's video assets. American Family Insurance reported a combined ratio for property-and-casualty lines of 84.6% in 2025, improved from 96.6% in 2024, and member equity of $14.3 billion, according to financial disclosures as cited by reel360.com — a financial backdrop that places the brand's purpose advertising investment in the context of a company returning to underwriting profitability. The structural effectiveness of the Dreamer of the Year format, now in its fourth consecutive year in the United States, rests on its demonstrated capacity to generate award recognition, earned editorial coverage, and consistent brand narrative reinforcement at a moment when American Family Insurance faces revenue pressure from larger competitors.
Direct Relief is the 2025 Dreamer of the Year honoree. The humanitarian organisation was recognised for its wildfire relief response in Los Angeles following fires that began on January 7, 2025. According to directrelief.org, Direct Relief distributed more than $12 million in aid and supported 65 community organisations over six months.
Elite Media created the 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign for American Family Insurance. The agency served as American Family's creative partner, with Chris Crawford as Chief Creative Officer and Jindai Joseph as Executive Creative Director, as documented by reel360.com. The campaign comprises a long-form video and a thirty-second film running digitally in the United States.
American Family Insurance has partnered with TIME for four consecutive years on the Dreamer of the Year award. The series launched in December 2022, honouring BlocPower founder Donnel Baird, as reported by mediapost.com. Each annual edition co-brands with TIME's Person of the Year franchise to give the insurer's social purpose narrative significant editorial reach.
The 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign won a Bronze Telly Award in the General–Brand Partnership category, according to tellyawards.com. Elite Media was named as the entrant and American Family Insurance as the client. The recognition affirms the campaign's standing among industry peers evaluating purpose-driven brand partnership work in the United States.
The 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign runs digitally and online in the United States. Published in December 2025, it comprises two media assets — a long-form video and a thirty-second film — distributed exclusively through digital channels, consistent with American Family Insurance's strategy of reaching audiences who engage with documentary-style content rather than linear television.
The Clapboard Score for the 2025 Dreamer of the Year campaign is 56 out of 100. The score reflects competent execution of a purpose-driven narrative format built around a genuinely powerful subject — Direct Relief's Los Angeles wildfire relief work — while indicating the campaign operates within an established creative template rather than breaking new ground.
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