Montefiore-Einstein's 'Brightest Stars' holiday campaign debuted during the 2024 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and earned two Silver Pencils at The One Show 2025.
ARCHIVEMontefiore-Einstein Lights Up the Holidays With Rare Disease Storytelling
Montefiore-Einstein's "Brightest Stars" is a three-minute holiday film created by Alto New York and released in the United States in December 2024, telling the story of five children with rare diseases who restore light to New York City after a blackout, anchoring a healthcare brand's seasonal campaign in the proposition that the rarest stars shine brightest.
The campaign marks the fifth consecutive annual holiday film in a tradition Montefiore-Einstein and Alto New York launched in 2020, according to helloalto.com. Each installment has deepened the brand's association with emotionally resonant, narrative-driven advertising that sets it apart from the clinical messaging common across the healthcare category. "Brightest Stars" extends that lineage by centering children living with rare diseases — patients who represent the most complex cases within Montefiore-Einstein's clinical mission — and elevating their experiences into a work of cinematic storytelling.
In the United States, the film debuted during the 2024 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast on NBC, as reported by mediapost.com, positioning the campaign at one of American television's most-watched live events and immediately placing the Montefiore-Einstein brand in front of a mass national audience. The campaign then extended across television, social media, over-the-top streaming platforms, out-of-home installations, and digital channels, according to adsoftheworld.com. Out-of-home creative was produced in collaboration with artist Steve Chorney, adding a hand-crafted visual dimension to the broader media buy. The Clapboard Score for "Brightest Stars" is 82 out of 100.
Montefiore-Einstein operates in one of the most competitive healthcare advertising environments in the United States. The US healthcare advertising market reached an estimated twenty-four point four billion dollars in 2024 and is projected to grow to thirty-four point three billion dollars by 2033, representing a compound annual growth rate of three point nine percent, according to mansimedia.com. Within that national landscape, the New York metropolitan area presents a particularly intense competitive battleground, with Northwell Health, NYU Langone Health, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Mount Sinai Health System all maintaining aggressive advertising presences, according to clapboard.com.
Northwell Health, which operates twenty-eight hospitals, is described as pursuing a dominant regional advertising strategy across the New York area, according to clapboard.com. NYU Langone Health markets heavily through television, out-of-home, print, and digital channels across New York, per nyulangone.org's own published communications. Against these well-resourced competitors, Montefiore-Einstein's strategic choice is distinction through narrative depth rather than media volume. The institution's focus on rare diseases — conditions that by definition affect smaller patient populations and receive comparatively less commercial attention — gives the campaign an authentic specificity that broader health system messaging typically cannot achieve.
Hannes Ciatti, Alto's founder and chief creative officer, has spoken publicly about the campaign's creative philosophy, emphasising the imperative to find stories within the hospital's actual clinical work rather than manufacturing emotional scenarios, as covered by mediapost.com. That inside-out strategic approach, grounding a holiday campaign in the lived reality of rare disease patients treated at Montefiore-Einstein in the United States, is what gives "Brightest Stars" its competitive differentiation in a market saturated with seasonal goodwill advertising.
Director Steve Rogers led production on "Brightest Stars" through Biscuit Filmworks, bringing the film's fantastical premise — five children with rare diseases illuminating New York City during a blackout — to screen with the craft standards of long-form narrative cinema rather than conventional healthcare advertising, as documented by The One Club and cutandrun.com. Rogers collaborated with director of photography Chase Irvin, whose visual approach gives the film a quality of light and shadow that reinforces the campaign's central metaphor: that rarity, properly seen, generates its own luminance.
The edit was handled by Jonnie Scarlett, with Sarah Micoch serving as assistant editor, and the score composed by Teddy Shapiro, whose music shapes the film's emotional arc from vulnerability to triumph across its three-minute runtime, per cutandrun.com. Sound design by Dan Flosdorf and colour grading by Tim Masick complete a post-production pipeline aligned with feature film craft conventions. Casting director Katherine Foronjy and costume designer Dasha Martikainen contributed to the authenticity of the child characters at the film's centre, while head of CG Mike Dalzell oversaw the visual effects sequences that realise the blackout-and-restoration narrative, according to oneclub.org.
The production team also included producers Alex Garcia Ortiz and Emily Skinner, with production executives Holly Vega, Lauren Hertzberg, Sam Pasquesi, and Sean Moody supporting across the shoot, per cutandrun.com. The out-of-home component, developed with artist Steve Chorney, introduced a painterly illustrative aesthetic that extended the campaign's visual world beyond the screen into New York's physical environment. Together, the production credits reflect a deliberate elevation of the healthcare category's creative standards — an approach The One Show recognised with two Silver Pencils at its 2025 awards, as reported by oneclub.org.
ARCHIVE"Brightest Stars" generated verifiable results across both audience reach and industry recognition. The film exceeded ten million YouTube views within three weeks of its release, according to oneclub.org. Alto New York reports sixty-five million total impressions and sixty-five million views in New York alone, figures cited by helloalto.com, reflecting the scale of the multi-platform distribution strategy built around the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut in the United States.
At The One Show 2025, the campaign received three distinct recognitions, as documented by oneclub.org: a Silver Pencil in Health and Wellness, a Silver Pencil in Craft and Art Direction, and a Merit award in Film and Video. The dual Silver Pencils in both category effectiveness and production craft are notable precisely because they validate the campaign's core strategic premise — that healthcare advertising in the United States can compete with general market creative on purely artistic terms without sacrificing clinical or brand credibility.
Coverage from mediapost.com, adsoftheworld.com, News Designrush, and The Drum collectively illustrate the campaign's earned media reach beyond its paid distribution. As the fifth installment in the Montefiore-Einstein annual holiday film tradition, "Brightest Stars" also builds longitudinal brand equity that single-campaign metrics cannot fully capture. The consistency of the series — with prior entries directed by filmmakers including Derek Cianfrance, as noted by musebyclios.com — means each new film activates an audience already conditioned to expect narrative ambition from this brand.
"Brightest Stars" is a three-minute holiday film created by Alto New York for Montefiore-Einstein, released in the United States in December 2024. The film follows five children with rare diseases who restore light to New York City after a blackout, embodying the proposition that the rarest stars shine brightest. It debuted during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.
The film debuted during NBC's broadcast of the 2024 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, according to mediapost.com. It subsequently ran across television, social media, OTT platforms, out-of-home, and digital channels throughout December 2024, giving the campaign broad national reach anchored in one of American television's highest-profile live events.
The film surpassed ten million YouTube views within three weeks, according to oneclub.org. Alto New York also reports sixty-five million total impressions across all platforms, per helloalto.com, with sixty-five million of those views recorded in New York alone, reflecting the campaign's concentrated impact in its primary healthcare market.
The campaign won two Silver Pencils at The One Show 2025 — one in Health and Wellness and one in Craft and Art Direction — plus a Merit award in Film and Video, as reported by oneclub.org. These recognitions validate both the campaign's strategic effectiveness in healthcare advertising and the production craft delivered by director Steve Rogers and Biscuit Filmworks.
Steve Rogers directed the film through Biscuit Filmworks, working alongside director of photography Chase Irvin, composer Teddy Shapiro, and editor Jonnie Scarlett, per cutandrun.com and oneclub.org. Rogers brought a cinematic approach to the three-minute production that earned the campaign a Silver Pencil in Craft and Art Direction at The One Show 2025.
"Brightest Stars" is the fifth consecutive annual holiday film from Montefiore-Einstein and Alto New York, extending a series launched in 2020, according to helloalto.com. Previous installments include the 2021 film "Caring Makes Magic," and the series has featured directors including Derek Cianfrance, as noted by musebyclios.com, establishing a consistent standard of cinematic ambition within United States healthcare advertising.
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