JobsOhio's Landing Home documentary series, created by Madwell in 2022, follows Air Force families living in Ohio to counter military relocation hesitancy
JobsOhio Turns Air Force Family Stories Into an Ohio Recruitment Film
Landing Home is a three-part documentary series produced by Madwell for JobsOhio in 2022, following real Air Force families living and working in Ohio to counter widespread reluctance among military personnel about relocating to the state and position Ohio as the most military-friendly destination in the United States.
JobsOhio is a state-authorized nonprofit whose mandate is to attract, retain, and expand businesses and career opportunities across Ohio. For this campaign, the organisation turned its attention to a specific and underserved audience: active-duty airmen, their families, veterans, and retired Air Force personnel who might consider making Ohio a permanent home. The campaign was timed deliberately to coincide with the United States Air Force's 75th anniversary, the service branch having been established on September 18, 1947, according to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
Madwell and JobsOhio spent more than one year in development, identifying and documenting Air Force families whose lived experiences could speak authentically to the concerns of military audiences. The resulting series comprises three episodes of approximately ten to twelve minutes each, structured around the Air Force's own core values. Episode one, titled Service Before Self, centres on the Manning family, who navigate life in Ohio while raising a child requiring specialist medical care. It launched on September 18, 2022. Episode two, Integrity First, aired October 29, 2022, and follows Sarah Tyloch, who retired after eleven years of service to raise her children and her younger sister following their mother's death from Alzheimer's disease. A third episode, Excellence in All We Do, was scheduled to launch November 30, 2022. Supporting the long-form content, the campaign also delivered three fifteen-second social trailers, four display banners, and one sixty-second theatrical-style trailer, with paid media running nationally across October through December 2022. The Clapboard Score for Landing Home is 59 out of 100.
Landing Home directly addresses what JobsOhio and Madwell identified as the dread factor — the documented apprehension that many airmen and their families feel when orders or career transitions point them toward Ohio. The strategic premise is straightforward: perception, not reality, is the obstacle. Families who relocate to Ohio routinely discover communities offering quality of life that rivals or exceeds more immediately desirable postings, but that discovery typically happens after the move rather than before it.
The campaign's target audience extends beyond active-duty personnel making near-term relocation decisions. JobsOhio explicitly designed Landing Home to influence Pentagon and Air Force policymakers, Ohio government officials, and retired and veteran airmen who might consider Ohio as a retirement destination. By operating across multiple decision-making tiers simultaneously, the campaign attempts to shift both individual behaviour and institutional perception of the state.
The public service and public interest advertising environment in which Landing Home operates has grown increasingly competitive. Nielsen reported that nonprofit public-service-announcement airings increased eight percent in the first four months of 2022 year over year and were sixty percent above the comparable period in 2017, according to Current, the nonprofit media news publication. In the same year, nonprofits increased digital advertising spending by twenty-eight percent, according to rgp.org. Against that backdrop, JobsOhio and Madwell chose depth over volume, anchoring the campaign in long-form documentary rather than the shorter formats that dominate nonprofit digital spend. The strategy also builds directly on Madwell's earlier work for JobsOhio — the Ohio is for Leaders campaign, which from its digital pilot in September 2020 and full rollout in January 2021 used provocative out-of-home and digital placements in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, and Chicago to recruit business leaders from high-cost coastal markets, as reported by Cleveland.com and News5Cleveland. Landing Home represents a tonal evolution from that assertive positioning toward something more intimate and emotionally grounded.
Landing Home uses the structural grammar of documentary filmmaking to do what conventional recruitment advertising cannot: it places the viewer inside a family's life rather than presenting Ohio as a proposition to be evaluated. Each episode is built around one of the United States Air Force's three official core values — Service Before Self, Integrity First, and Excellence in All We Do — anchoring personal family narratives within a framework that military audiences will recognise immediately as culturally significant.
The decision to make each episode ten to twelve minutes long is itself a creative argument. At that length, the series asks audiences to invest time rather than skim, which filters for viewers who are genuinely considering their options and creates the conditions for the emotional identification that shorter formats cannot sustain. The three fifteen-second social trailers and the single sixty-second theatrical trailer serve as entry points, using the visual and tonal language of cinema release marketing to signal that what follows is worth watching in full.
The Manning family episode, Service Before Self, is particularly precise in its strategic targeting. By centring a family managing a child's complex medical needs, it speaks directly to one of the most practical anxieties that military families carry when facing relocation: access to specialised healthcare. The Tyloch episode, Integrity First, addresses a different but equally resonant concern — the question of what life looks like after the uniform comes off, and whether a state can provide the community infrastructure that sustains a family through that transition. Production credits for the Landing Home series are not publicly documented beyond the confirmed agency-client partnership between Madwell and JobsOhio. The series was produced across a development window spanning more than a year, with families identified through an extended research and outreach process rather than cast through conventional production channels.
No verified third-party performance data for the Landing Home campaign is publicly available in terms of reach figures, view counts, or measured shifts in Ohio relocation sentiment among military audiences. What the public record does confirm is the scope of the media investment: a paid campaign flight running nationally across October through December 2022, supported by documentary episodes, social trailers, and display assets distributed across multiple channels.
The structural choices Madwell made for Landing Home point toward effectiveness factors that are assessable even without published metrics. Long-form documentary content, when distributed with paid amplification, consistently generates higher completion rates and stronger brand recall among self-selected audiences than short-form equivalents — a pattern observed repeatedly in public interest advertising contexts. The campaign's decision to anchor each episode in a core Air Force value rather than in a generic quality-of-life message is likely to have increased relevance and credibility among the military audiences it needed most to reach. The geographic focus on Dayton and broader Ohio communities, combined with the national media flight, reflects a layered approach: build local authenticity, then scale the message across the United States.
JobsOhio's status as a state-authorized nonprofit distinguishes it from both purely commercial advertisers and from competitors such as state economic development agencies in Texas and Florida, which have pursued military-adjacent talent attraction with more conventional advertising formats. Landing Home's documentary model creates content that remains relevant and searchable well beyond the original paid media window, extending the effective campaign life at no incremental production cost. The Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100 reflects a campaign with clear strategic intent and genuine creative ambition that is constrained by limited public evidence of measurable outcome against its stated objectives.
Landing Home is a three-part documentary series produced by Madwell for JobsOhio in 2022. It follows real Air Force families living in Ohio and was released to coincide with the Air Force's 75th anniversary. Its goal is to position Ohio as the most military-friendly state in the United States for active personnel and veterans.
Madwell, a full-service creative and marketing agency, created Landing Home for client JobsOhio. The two organisations worked together for more than one year to identify and document authentic Air Force family stories before production began. JobsOhio is a state-authorized nonprofit focused on attracting and retaining businesses and careers across Ohio.
The dread factor refers to the apprehension many airmen and their families feel about relocating to Ohio. Landing Home directly targets this reluctance by showing real families who moved to Ohio and found communities offering strong quality of life — countering negative perceptions before relocation decisions are made across the United States.
Landing Home comprises three documentary episodes. Service Before Self launched September 18, 2022. Integrity First aired October 29, 2022. Excellence in All We Do was scheduled for November 30, 2022. Each episode runs approximately ten to twelve minutes and is named after one of the United States Air Force's official core values.
Ohio is for Leaders was a Madwell-created campaign that launched as a digital pilot in September 2020, using provocative placements in cities including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to recruit business talent from coastal markets, as reported by Cleveland.com. Landing Home represents a tonal evolution toward intimate documentary storytelling aimed at military rather than corporate audiences.
Landing Home received a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign with genuine creative ambition and clear strategic purpose — using long-form documentary to shift military relocation sentiment — that is limited by the absence of publicly available performance data confirming measurable impact on its stated objectives in the United States.
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