A Facebook Search for the Superheroes of Nursing
About a year ago, our longtime client, Mosby’s Nursing Suite, came to us with a new challenge. We had already helped them through a branding program and built marketing materials around their core promise, “Confidence Connected.” We followed that up by helping them enter the world of social media with a blog, Facebook and Twitter. And now, they wanted to create a full-scale social movement, to which purchasers and end-users alike could connect.
Here’s what we did.
We developed a campaign to recognize excellence in the nursing industry as a reflection of the type of excellence that Mosby’s Nursing Suite products instill in nurses. Mosby’s Nursing Suite assists nurses in critical roles across the healthcare organization – from the emergency department to nursing executives, patient safety officers to nurse educators.
Put simply, the products help nurses be excellent. They help nurses be heroes.
The Superheroes of Nursing Contest and T-Shirt Giveaway launched on May 1, 2011, during National Nurses Week.
For four months (May 2011 – August 2011), Facebook fans were invited to nominate nurses who excelled at certain aspects of their jobs – patient care, education, standards & regulations and time management. Each of these core qualities were tied to superhero roles – The Protectors, the Achievers, the Educators and the Validators.
At the end of each month, three finalists were chosen and put to a public vote. The winners were revealed at the 2011 ANCC National Magnet Conference® on October 5, 2011. Following the conference, each of the four winners was profiled on the Mosby’s Nursing Suite Connect blog.
The T-shirt Giveaway was a supplement to the Superheroes of Nursing Contest. Every Friday from May until the ANCC National Magnet Conference® in October, ten ‘Super Nurse’ T-shirts were awarded to Facebook fans who entered the giveaway.
Other components of the campaign included a landing page on ConfidenceConnected.com, a video, targeted email campaigns and Facebook ads, and stickers that were handed out at trade shows and conferences over the course of the campaign.
And here’s how the campaign turned out.
- Between May 1, 2011 (the launch date) and October 5, 2011 (the reveal at ANCC), the Mosby’s Facebook page added 7,020 new fans (a 238% increase over the previous 5-month time period) and increased interactions by 419% (over the previous 5-month time period).
- The contest and giveaway apps were the most visited pages on the Facebook page, being viewed 21,276 times.
- Overall site traffic to ConfidenceConnected.com doubled the first week in May, when the initial email announcement for the Superheroes of Nursing Contest was sent out.
- During the 5-month promo (May 1-October 5), traffic on the site remained double what it was in the previous 5-month time period.
- The Mosby’s Heroes landing page on ConfidenceConnected.com had 1,523 unique visitors during the promotion.
- Facebook became – and remains – one of the top referrers to ConfidenceConnected.com
- Sixty-two entries were submitted for the contest in the four rounds of nominations, and 1,355 votes were cast to pick the winners.
- The T-Shirt Giveaway had an average of 164 entries per week.
- 2,967 email addresses were collected to be contacted in the future with newsletters and promotions.
- At the 2011 ANCC National Magnet Conference®, where the winners were announced, the Mosby’s team scanned nearly 1,000 badges after attendees requested product demos, T-shirts or more information from sales.
- They tracked more than $210,000 in new sales opportunities through prospects and customers that received the Superhero emails during the four months the contest was running.
The 2012 Superheroes of Nursing Contest started this week, and this time around, the superheroes are fighting off the evil Obstructo. Learn more about the contest at MosbysHeroes.com.
And just a note on our use of Comic Sans – one of the most hated typefaces in all of graphic design. We felt it was appropriate, considering the materials were designed to emulate comic book lettering. There is rarely an excuse for using comic sans, but we wanted to point out that it was intentional, and funny.
