“Our client, Iroquois Health Care Association, an Albany New York based association of upstate hospitals, was designated as a workforce investment organization and received funding from New York State Department of Health,” she explained. Mower was the agency of choice to launch a campaign to both recruit and also train long term care providers. “We're one of the largest independent agencies in terms of Ad Age's ranking, a top B2B agency in terms of B2B marketing, a brand top brand experience agency chief marketer and we are a top PR agency,” she noted. The recruitment campaign, named Caring is Your Calling was for a brand titled the Caring Gene.
The funding for this campaign, launched well before the pandemic, was based on a grant from New York State. “The funding was allocated because of the severe shortage of long term care providers, especially at the entry caregiver level, so certified nursing assistants, home health aides and personal care assistants. There is a dire shortage with an aging population, not just in New York State but across the country, and, frankly, these jobs don't pay very much.”
Mower’s job was, as Steenstra explained, “To get more people across New York State to consider whether they were well suited for a career in long term care. We started by conducting some primary research among the audience. We talked to caregivers in long term care who are very successful very happy very good at what they do and teased out what their motivation was - what led them into this field, what gets them out of bed in the morning, why do they love it knowing how hard it is. It's such a demanding career. It's very physical. It's not very glamorous. It certainly doesn't pay very well, especially in the beginning, although there is a career ladder.”
She discovered a behavioral gem in the research. “What we discovered was there are some people that have this desire to care for others. They want to be helpful. They're nurturing. They just want to help people, and so for them, there's no other job that would be as fulfilling, money aside, difficulties aside. It's an area of healthcare where a caregiver can really build a relationship with the patient and the resident. It's not just like at the hospital where you're in and out or primary care where you're in and out. Caregivers really get to know the residents, or the people that they're caring for in their homes. So with that insight, that idea that some people have this innate desire to care, we developed this Caring Gene brand and that became the centerpiece for the campaign,” she noted.
The message from this insight was crafted into a statewide multimedia campaign that included, “Radio, television, out of home, digital - the full spectrum of media to target that audience of primarily 18 to 34 year olds and even more, 18 to 24s who were just starting their careers, maybe just coming out of high school.”
This initiative had three phases. Phase one was launched about a year before the pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, the message had to be re-crafted as a call-to-action. “We started out in the first phase of the campaign, as the Caring Gene and had several different iterations of TV spots and assets. But less than a year into the campaign, Covid hit and all of a sudden, the Caring Gene didn't feel as urgent,’ she explained and added, “There was this whole other reason to get involved in healthcare. We would have been tone deaf if we had just continued with the current campaign. That's when we pivoted and launched the Caring is Your Calling.”
The message was clear. “We took our cue from the World War Two Rosie the Riveter poster and other kinds of propaganda posters like those vintage posters that were meant to rally civilians into action. The whole look and feel of that second phase of the campaign was much more urgent. We had a new TV spot, all new creative which was really in the moment and talked about the urgency of becoming a healthcare hero,” she stated. This campaign performed very well.
According to Steenstra, at that point in the campaign, “We had two years and two different campaigns worth of data and insight on how it performed, especially on social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit. We were able to see what was resonating.” Mower could see what platforms and ads were most engaging and what other online activities were taking place. “We could see that they were into culture. A lot of them were into hip hop. They were playing games online.”
So, in the third iteration of the campaign, Mower pivoted to take into account the online behavior of its target demographic. Their usage indicated that they needed a, “Very different from the campaign that we had initially launched and we knew that our sweet spot was even younger than the initial campaign so our third iteration was called the Dance Campaign. We created a series of eight different videos of groups of caregivers in different dance scenarios, almost like flash mob type, some of them were like flash mob type dances with a more spontaneous feeling. Others were more storytelling, someone dancing their way from a dull boring kind of retail job or fast food job into something so much more fulfilling in caregiving.”
This proved to be very successful messaging. “It took off,” she added, “We never had so many comments, shares and likes and people posting things and really engage with a paid ad. That's what we saw with this campaign. It was just an incredible outpouring. We got the psychographic finely tuned in that third iteration. Also we were still in the height of Covid and people started to realize how critical these healthcare providers are.” The campaign garnered almost 2.1 million total website visits, 143,000 total job search tool interactions and resulted in almost 2,300 job applications.
The campaign was also recognized by the industry winning the prestigious Grand Prix award in an international competition in 2021, The Drum B2B Awards in 2022, two gold and six other awards during the 2021 Healthcare Advertising Awards and four gold and five other 2021 ANA B2 awards.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
Artwork by Charlene Weisler
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