#WithAllOurHearts - National awareness campaign for NHS Charities together

NHS Charities Together were looking to mark the 2 year anniversary of the global pandemic by creating a campaign to show continued support for NHS staff. However, when the Omicron variant hit at the start of the year, it meant that pressure on NHS staff rose to an all time high. We were asked to urgently help create a national awareness campaign in a matter of weeks to boost public awareness.

We worked with different teams within the organisation to create a digital campaign for the public, partners and ambassadors to engage them and help spread the message whilst highlighting the ongoing pressure faced by NHS staff. The campaign simultaneously galvanised the public to show support for workers and reminded people to show that we still care about our NHS.

How we helped

We created a concept that would work across a variety of mediums and for different audiences based on the immediate ask and incorporating brand background and tone of voice. 

We crafted an idea that felt familiar, working off what people already do or are used to across social media usage and behaviours. Using a blue heart emoji next to your profile name or replacing a profile picture with a blue heart were both easy asks and yet created a conversation around why these were appearing.

We helped move public association with NHS icons away from rainbows onto the brand blue hearts. We created a marketing strategy, messaging, digital assets and templates that can be future proofed and rolled out to different audiences.

Campaign landing page

For any campaign we look at the user journey across all mediums to help nurture users towards becoming supporters of the brand. A campaign landing page is a crucial way to consolidate a campaign with consistent messaging, relevant information, more ways to get involved and provide a key platform to sign-post to.

We designed a landing page based on current website templates and the campaign visual language, with a key focus on the storytelling of how we set out the cause, encouraged action and provided more ways to get involved as well as providing key information on what NHS CT does. We used their existing WordPress CMS tool to build the page based on designs.

Partner and ambassador support

Harnessing the reach of partners and ambassadors was key to spreading our message and getting the public to support the campaign. NHS CT is made up of over 200 charity partners and we provided them with tools, messaging and assets to become part of the campaign whilst being able to add their own branding. We created social templates making it simple for partners to edit and join in. The uptake was greater than expected with many praising the ease in which to participate as well as being thankful for the materials to help them communicate their own objectives throughout the campaign.

We were also able to use the high profile ambassadors that NHS CT are lucky enough to have onboard to get involved. Our ask of sharing a blue heart emoji was a simple action they could easily get behind to share with their followers. To further the campaign we also asked people to physically share a blue heart in their homes either by creating their own or by using our downloadable template.

Press

Ambassadors such as Jordan Henderson (England & Liverpool footballer) and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge made hospital visits to help raise morale and use their status to help create awareness of the cause. We also had several staff who were willing to share their difficult experiences, including Paramedic Ben Glover who was punched and bitten by patients as he witnessed first hand the rise in abuse. These stories were picked up by media outlets such as ITV News, BBC Breakfast and BBC Sport and national newspapers

Live memorial

To commemorate the second anniversary of the World Health Organisation declaring Covid-19 a global pandemic, NHS Charities Together held a live-broadcast remembrance service including a minute’s silence to reflect on the sacrifices of health and social care staff during this time, and the impact the pandemic has had on us all. We used our campaign materials to help promote the event and broadcast content, as well as highlighting the giant blue heart memorial housed at the National Memorial Arboretum.

Learnings

Engage
Partner organisations were grateful for supporting materials and eager to be part of the bigger conversation whilst also highlighting their own values and objectives. This has made NHS CT even more aware how important these partners are and we have already been briefed to work on more 365 communication materials to help engage them.

Adapt
During the campaign war broke out in the Ukraine and many people took to social media to share their support. It felt inappropriate during this time to ask people to share a blue heart whilst they were already sharing their support for the Ukraine. You can never predict what may happen during a campaign, and during this devastating development in global current affairs we decided to shift the focus more onto the live memorial. This had an impact on the overall effectiveness of sharing a blue heart, but as the assets are predesigned and the content evergreen, it will be something that can be relaunched and used again at a later date.

Growth Mindset
We started this project with a small budget and a quick turn-around time., a challenge we at Rhodium thrive on. We helped prove that you don’t need a large budget or long timeline to create an impactful digital campaign which can grow and grow.