Children’s Specialized Hospital, the nation’s leading provider of inpatient and outpatient care for children with special health needs, created the #FightFace social media campaign in the summer of 2015 to increase brand awareness, build consumers’ positive brand impression, and start a digital movement. We wanted to engage with all of our audiences in a campaign that would empower patients, families, donors, volunteers, and staff in a new and exciting way.
#FightFace was a cross platform campaign that encouraged audiences to post a selfie of their “Fight Face” to inspire the young patients at Children’s Specialized Hospital to keep fighting to get better. Singer Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” was a hit that summer, and we used it as the anthem of our kids, creating a music video that featured patients and staff working hard in various physical, occupational and recreational therapies to help achieve their health goals. The video launched in July 2015 and in just a month we had gained national coverage and were invited to join Rachel Platten on an episode of The View.
Objectives
Our goal was to inspire people to take action. To have people feel so moved that they felt like they could actually make a difference in the lives of children, but that they didn’t have to donate money, give time, or sacrifice anything to participate. Living in the world of the selfie and the hashtag, we combined the two in a way where people could engage on social media that wasn’t outwardly self-serving to our brand. Children’s Specialized wasn’t going to financially benefit from each selfie posted, and our message wasn’t directly to help our patients or even a specific service line. It was to inspire our children to keep fighting.
Strategy
Our small but mighty in-house marketing team executed the entire campaign with the help of a video production partner. We put all of our resources behind the success of #FightFace, promoting the initiative across social media, distributing to email subscribers, working with local and national publications to spread the word, and managing a web page for the movement.
We planned to launch the campaign across social media and have a #FightFace Selfie Wall of Fame on a dedicated webpage. This dedicated web page hosted the video, explained the campaign and was used as a home for every #FightFace selfie posted across social media.
A large piece of our strategy also included using traditional media to spread the word about the campaign. We reached out to print and broadcast media to report on the success of the campaign and encourage others to participate. This in-depth public relations work is what led to much of the campaign’s success.
Implementation
We launched the #FightFace music video across our top three social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The very moving video shows our children fighting through their therapy sessions, fighting to learn to walk again, fighting for their lives and celebrating their wins! The video also included our staff – doctors, nurses, therapists and administrative/leadership teams – who fight right along with our patients every day. The video very clearly included the call to action asking people to post their #FightFace selfie, to inspire our kids to continue their fight to get better.
The creation and release of the music video was just the beginning. We walked the halls of our 13 locations encouraging staff and patients to post their own #FightFace selfies. We started to build our #FightFace Wall of Fame web page and word started to grow about the campaign.
Our team blanketed social media with the video and used every celebrity contact we had to spread the word about the #FightFace campaign. Some of our famous #FightFace selfie posters included former Rutgers University football player Eric LeGrand, WPLJ radio personalities Todd Pettingill and Jayde Donovan, NASH FM America’s Morning Show Blair Garner and Chuck Wicks, and Sesame’s Street’s Oscar the Grouch!
After reaching out to local media and national media, we were invited to be on the August 3, 2015 episode of ABC’s The View, featuring Rachel Platten performing her hit song and segments of Children’s Specialized Hospital’s music video. Two patients were invited to the show to share their personal stories of their struggles and what #FightFace meant to them. Other major media outlets also covered the campaign including, NJ.com/The Star Ledger (New Jersey’s largest daily newspaper), and TheMighty.com a national disability advocacy website.
Reception and Outcomes
To date, the video has had over 66,000 views on Facebook and YouTube, and the hospital has received over 550 #FightFace selfies. The #FightFace campaign won the “Facebook Best Use of Video” category in PRNews’ annual Social Media awards and was an honorable mention in the “Facebook Public Relations Campaign” and “Twitter Use of Hashtag” categories.
#FightFace has left a lasting impact on Children’s Specialized Hospital. To this day, we are still able to share the Fight Song music and the Fight Face selfies to inspire our patients, staff, volunteers, and donors. What started as a simple idea of increasing brand awareness grew into a movement that we are proud to continue to help kids everywhere fight to get better.
About Children’s Specialized Hospital
Children’s Specialized Hospital is the nation’s leading provider of inpatient and outpatient care for children from birth to 21 years of age facing special health challenges — from chronic illnesses and complex physical disabilities like brain and spinal cord injuries, to developmental and behavioral issues like autism and mental health. At thirteen different New Jersey locations, our pediatric specialists partner with families to make our many innovative therapies and medical treatments more personalized and effective...so children can achieve more of their goals. To help, or find more information: call 888-CHILDRENS; visit www.childrens-specialized.org, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
By Kristina Gannotta
Digital Marketing Coordinator
Children’s Specialized Hospital
Mountainside, NJ
kgannotta@childrens-specialized.org