ARCHIVEVABYSMO Reframes Pharma Storytelling With A Beautiful Sight
How VABYSMO and Grey Health Redefined Pharmaceutical Storytelling With A Beautiful Sight VABYSMO's...
Klick Health Holiday Hugs Turns Employee Reunions Into a Cause
Holiday Hugs is a four-minute holiday film produced by Klick Health and released on December 3, 2024, in Canada and the United States, combining AI-assisted imagery with real surprise reunions involving Klick employees to advocate for the emotional and physiological importance of physical connection during the holiday season.
Klick Health published the film as part of its annual internal holiday-video tradition, according to klick.com. Where earlier editions of that tradition leaned on acts of generosity — the 2021 film sent employees across North America with $100 bills and raised funds for Make-A-Wish Canada, per klick.com — the 2024 edition reorients around a specific health insight: the measurable cost of not being able to hug someone you love. The campaign sits squarely within the health industry, using an emotionally resonant consumer moment to open a wider conversation about social connection as a public-health concern.
The film distributed across Canada and the United States in December 2024, carrying a direct charitable mechanic alongside its storytelling. Klick pledged one dollar for every YouTube view the film received, up to a maximum of ten thousand dollars, with proceeds directed to the Foundation for Social Connection, according to klick.com. That structure transforms passive viewership into measurable advocacy, embedding a social connection organization at the centre of a campaign that could otherwise read as seasonal branded content. The Clapboard Score for Holiday Hugs is 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its emotional brief with competence while stopping short of the creative distinctiveness that characterises category-defining healthcare advertising.
Klick Health grounded Holiday Hugs in primary research before a single frame was produced. A Maru/Blue survey commissioned by Klick and conducted among approximately three thousand Americans and Canadians found that seventy-four percent of respondents said they could not hug someone they wished they could during the 2024 holiday season, according to klick.com. Within that group, sixty-two percent cited the death of a loved one as the reason, and forty-eight percent pointed to geographical distance, per the same source. Those figures are not decorative — they define the strategic territory the campaign occupies and explain why the Foundation for Social Connection, a social connection organization, was chosen as the charitable partner rather than a more conventional holiday beneficiary.
The strategic logic connects individual emotional experience to a recognised public-health framework. Jillian Racoosin Kornmeier, Executive Director of the Foundation for Social Connection, is quoted by klick.com as observing that the holidays can often heighten experiences of loneliness and isolation, and that hugs offer a simple, meaningful way to foster greater social connection. That framing positions Holiday Hugs not as sentiment for its own sake but as a campaign with health-industry credentials, differentiating Klick from competitors such as McCann Health and Publicis Health, both of which produce high-volume holiday content that rarely integrates charitable mechanics with survey-backed insight at this level of specificity. In the United States and across the Canadian market, the loneliness and social isolation conversation had already entered mainstream policy discourse by 2024, giving the campaign a cultural moment to attach itself to rather than a trend it needed to manufacture.
Holiday Hugs deploys two distinct creative registers within a single four-minute runtime. The film interweaves AI-generated imagery exploring the emotional importance of physical connection with footage of genuine surprise reunions orchestrated for Klick Health employees, according to klick.com. The combination is deliberate: AI visuals establish the universal, almost archetypal quality of a hug, while the real reunions anchor that abstraction in human specificity, preventing the film from drifting into the illustrative distance that characterises much AI-assisted advertising.
Rich Levy, Chief Creative Officer at Klick Health, is quoted by klick.com as saying there is nothing quite like the warmth and reassurance of a heartfelt hug, and that with Holiday Hugs the team wanted to celebrate the profound connections that hugs create even when distance or life circumstances keep people apart. That creative brief — distance and loss as the structural condition, the hug as the response — runs through every production choice in the film. The surprise-reunion format, which Klick had used in earlier holiday editions documented on klick.com, is well-established in branded emotional filmmaking, but the 2024 version advances it by using the AI layer as a conceptual frame rather than a production shortcut. The result is a film that uses technology to argue for the irreplaceability of physical, human contact — a tension that gives Holiday Hugs its primary creative interest. Production credits beyond Rich Levy's creative leadership are not publicly documented in available sources for this campaign.
Holiday Hugs earned meaningful editorial attention across healthcare and advertising press in December 2024. Ad Age featured the campaign in its Campaigns to Know About Today series in December 2024, according to financialcontent.com. The Drum included it in its roundup Christmas crackers: 2024's most creative festive greetings, published December 20, 2024, per financialcontent.com. MM+M covered the film under a First Look format, according to klick.com. That three-outlet editorial footprint across trade press in the United States and Canada represents solid earned-media performance for an internal holiday film rather than a client-facing campaign.
No independently verified view-count or donation-total data for the YouTube charitable mechanic is publicly available at the time of writing. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that succeeds at the level of strategic clarity and emotional intention — the Maru/Blue survey gives it a research foundation that most holiday films lack, and the Foundation for Social Connection partnership gives it genuine health-industry purpose — but the creative execution does not fully capitalise on the conceptual tension between AI imagery and human reunion. The surprise-reunion format, however well-produced, is familiar territory in branded holiday filmmaking, and the AI integration, while thematically coherent, does not produce a visual or narrative approach that is distinctively Klick's own. The campaign works; it does not yet define the category.
Holiday Hugs is a four-minute holiday film released by Klick Health on December 3, 2024, in Canada and the United States. It combines AI-generated imagery with real employee reunions and pledges one dollar per YouTube view, up to ten thousand dollars, to the Foundation for Social Connection, according to klick.com.
Klick commissioned a Maru/Blue survey of approximately three thousand Americans and Canadians. According to klick.com, seventy-four percent said they could not hug someone they wished they could during the 2024 holidays, with sixty-two percent citing bereavement and forty-eight percent citing geographical distance as the primary reasons.
The Foundation for Social Connection is a social connection organization whose mission aligns directly with the campaign's health-industry premise. Klick directed its YouTube view-based donation to the Foundation because, as Executive Director Jillian Racoosin Kornmeier noted via klick.com, the holidays frequently heighten loneliness and isolation, making physical connection a public-health concern.
Holiday Hugs received editorial coverage from Ad Age, The Drum, and MM+M in December 2024, according to financialcontent.com and klick.com. The Drum included it in its Christmas crackers roundup of 2024's most creative festive greetings, and Ad Age featured it in its Campaigns to Know About Today series.
Klick Health produces an annual holiday film for its employees, per klick.com. The 2021 edition sent staff across North America with cash to perform acts of giving and raised funds for Make-A-Wish Canada. The 2024 Holiday Hugs film advances that tradition by incorporating AI-assisted imagery and targeting the specific health issue of social connection.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
