Revolution Messaging was honored to work with Health Care for America Now, the largest coalition of organizations fighting to make quality, affordable health care a right for everyone in America. With so many people in this country in dire need of health care reform, as well as many of our friends and family members, this fight was a personal one.
Our focus when working with HCAN was building a mobile program and interactive voice tools to help with both advancing their message and promoting grassroots action. In addition, we provided an online advertising strategy that focused on experimenting with a wide variety of advertising inventory and landing pages.
Now that the first set of major reforms have become law, it’s important to summarize the lessons we learned:
Putting SMS Into Grassroots
HCAN’s text messaging program was effective and was more consistent in generating Calls to Congress than any other tool. The reason is simple: SMS open rates are exceedingly high and much greater than other forms of mass communication. In addition, supporters could call their Members of Congress easily with a simple click from their phone – no need to even dial.
Don’t Fear Real-time Metrics
It’s easy to misread metrics. A major strength of new media tools is the availability of real-time results. But premature results can lead to the wrong conclusions, especially when a tactic hasn’t had a chance to make its mark. For example, our Call Congress tool combined with a unique toll-free number helped us to track how well paid media was generating calls to Congress. Initial results were lower than expected, but if we hadn’t tested more thoroughly, we wouldn’t have noticed that the paid media was improving response rates from other forms of communication.
New Media Deepens Interaction
Providing an opportunity for target audiences to interact with you matters. This is true with mobile communications, social media, and online advertising. Our highest-performing online ads gave people an opportunity to interact with the campaign using their personal social media accounts. Providing this forum for activists created a space to share personal testimonials, framing the debate and breathing life into the fight. The #sickofit hashtag is still used as a rallying cry for people sharing their personal health care stories on Twitter.
Online Advertising + Social Media = Value-Add To Traditional Media
Online advertising hasn’t replaced broadcast advertising on TV or radio yet, but it definitely deserves a greater percentage of paid media budgets. We were excited to push the envelope and experiment with many new forms of online and mobile advertising to build lists and test messaging tactics. Our advertising work with HCAN demonstrated that online ads shouldn’t mimic offline creative. Applying the message to a new medium requires applying it in new ways. What works in print media often needs to be changed to get attention online. We made a big splash around the broadcast ads on TV with a “Google Ad Blast” – one day of heavy online ad saturation on Google with matching “skins” on prominent websites.
New Media Is Counter-Intuitive — Tests Matter!
One of our favorite ad concepts for HCAN was the FAILephant, a GOP twist on the Twitter Fail Whale. We thought it was clever and played on a communications tool that was generating a lot of media buzz already. The FAILephant ad buy underperformed against our expectations. While the FAILephant will always have a place near and dear to our hearts, our tests told the truth. We can’t always predict what will perform the best. A year of running ads offered us a lot of in-depth information about what worked in HCAN’s push for reform and what didn’t. Of course, make sure you give a concept a chance by making tweaks as mentioned in our 2nd point.
Micro-Targeting, Macro-Results
The ability to micro-target and narrowcast easily is a major advantage of online advertising. Want to reach Congressional staff in August while they’re thinking more about their next softball game than about health care reform? Or how about fans of Rachel Maddow who live in Tallahassee? Custom messages increase the chance that users will take action, but a mis-targeted custom message can waste money and turn them off. Using social media profiles, geography and other instantly available data is essential to online advertising planning. Micro-targeting was integrated into all of HCAN’s online advertising plans.
It was an honor to work with HCAN in shaping the fight against private insurance companies who have profited off the old health care system for years while people in need suffer. HCAN’s valiant efforts deserve recognition, especially the members of the new media team we worked with daily. The fact that they were able to hold together the largest progressive coalition in history to enact health care reforms says it all. It was a long fight to get through the first stages of a momentous battle. HCAN has lit the torch and passed it on for us to all to wield in the days and years ahead.
