Strategy
Whether articulating a brand persona or establishing thematic content priorities, these strategic snapshots seek to balance the directives of a given initiative, campaign, or channel with the opportunity to build authentic engagement among the desired audience. Approaches to healthcare, higher education, and consumer package goods range from influencer and content strategy to a channel pivot born from real-time learnings around user behavior.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals
What is More Than Tired?
Based on advertising restrictions related to the XYREM® brand’s boxed warning label, Jazz Pharmaceuticals created an unbranded online resource for people with narcolepsy (PWN) that provides patients and caregivers with educational information around the disease and its symptoms
Content Strategy
Situation: After 2 years on Facebook and 1 year on Instagram, More Than Tired needed to reinforce its reason for being by honing multiple priorities across disease awareness, education, and diagnosis
Insight: Channel behavior establishes a delineation between performance objectives based on functionality: Facebook is more effective at driving website traffic (with paid backing), while Instagram allows for expanded engagement and reach through selective hashtag use among specific sets of users
Solution: Create balanced content pillars to support primary and secondary objectives for driving site traffic and leveraging site content for engaging posts
2020 Content Pillars
2020-21 Content Pillar Expansion for JZP-258
Healthy Living content developed for unbranded social channels established an indirect connection to the XYWAV® brand launch later in 2020
Unlike More Than Tired content produced through 2019, most healthy living posts are aimed at people diagnosed with narcolepsy, many of whom experience comorbid conditions, including cardiovascular disease and mental health conditions like depression and anxiety
Patient Journey and Content Strategy Pivot
Situation: In preparation for a lower sodium product launch, significant research revealed opportunities to support narcolepsy patients across unbranded and branded touch points throughout their journey from diagnosis to symptoms management
Insight: While unbranded messaging cannot mention treatment options or their benefits, it can address comorbid health conditions and related risk factors for mitigation through non-pharmacological means
Solution: More Than Tired content increased awareness of mental and physical comorbidities in narcolepsy, while providing healthy lifestyle recommendations related to diet, exercise, and mindfulness. The branded product launch focused on building awareness around its new formulation with 92% less sodium than the original treatment
Narcolepsy patient journey
Unbranded content focus
Branded content focus
2021 Content Pillars
Influencer Strategy
Situation: Social media conversations revealed a lack of awareness and understanding of narcolepsy among the general public, and reality television’s Katie Morton publicly revealed her diagnosis after long days on set that didn’t allow for ample rest
Insight: A reality TV personality actively building her career as an influencer runs contrary to the stigma of laziness surrounding narcolepsy and showcases her experience living with the disease while thriving personally and professionally
Solution: Highlight slice-of-life vignettes through photo and video storytelling across More Than Tired and Katie Morton’s social accounts to maximize reach and tell her story from different perspectives; campaign assets were also tailored for articles on The Mighty and Buzzfeed
More Than Tired engagement metrics
Katie Morton engagement metrics
Content Integration with The Mighty and BuzzFeed
Northwestern University
Providing strategic oversight to Northwestern’s university-wide social media practice involved maintaining the authoritative integrity of its institutional brand voice while supporting and amplifying the larger community of students, prospects, alumni, faculty, and staff
Content Strategy
Situation: When Northwestern Global Marketing transitioned from press releases to news stories, it prompted a thorough articulation of thematic content pillars for social media channels and their respective audiences
Insight: The established social media structure was all-encompassing enough to work as a content tagging methodology for the redesigned news website (circa early 2016); it also served as the basis for a tiered asset labeling taxonomy within Sprinklr SaaS (early 2017)
Solution: The main university channels feature the most impactful and resonant stories representing strategic priorities across its 12 schools, numerous research institutes, and administrative departments; the trifecta for elevating major stories includes a homepage hero image and feature story, supported by social coverage and targeted media outreach
Content focus by channel
Audience breakout by channel
Expanding Institutional Reach
Leveraging Shared Communication Priorities
School/Departmental Collaboration Examples
Overarching Key Performance Indicators
Tactical Strategy
Situation: As the most student-centric social channel in 2017, Northwestern’s Instagram account relied heavily on campus beauty, while academic content struggled to see the same engagement; with the advent of Instagram Stories, there was an opportunity to translate meaningful research into something students care about
Insight: Generally-speaking, college students have a distaste for statistics, because they associate it with grueling coursework instead of practical data
Solution: By parsing out high-level facts and key takeaways, frame-by-frame research narratives are more digestible as they emphasize real-world applications and potential outcomes of new learnings
Campaign Strategy
Situation: 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the Northwestern Bursar’s Office Takeover by a group of Black students, and the event served as a turning point in the Black student experience amid the nationwide Civil Rights Movement; while the Black Alumni Association (NUBAA) managed oversight of the 2018 commemoration, there was an opportunity for institutional social media storytelling around the historic lead-up to campus change
Insight: The predominantly affluent, white undergraduate student body was largely unaware of the events that precipitated the creation of NUBAA and the Black House, and the adversity Black students faced in the context of national and local protest
Solution: The wealth of archival photos and newspaper clippings lent themselves to the creation of a 7-part Instagram Story series of 7-frame episodes shared over the course of 3 weeks; each episode covered national, local, and campus events, including an hour-by-hour recap of the 38-hour peaceful protest on May 3, 1968
NB: Below is a selection from each of the 7 episodes, but does not include the full series
Episode themes
MLK slain
Open Housing
Student demands
Wait and plan
The Takeover
Resolution
Legacy
Kellogg School of Management
As an elite M7 Business School, leadership at Kellogg School of Management sought to maintain the school’s stronghold on Twitter with a follower count just behind Harvard and Stanford. When Wharton began to gain steam with its own paid promotion, Kellogg embarked on a methodical strategy in pursuit of Twitter growth.
Paid Twitter Strategy
Situation: Previous paid efforts yielded new followers, but engagement failed to keep pace with account growth; Kellogg embarked upon a growth campaign that prioritized quality followers who engage with content vs quantity followers who exist in number only
Insight: Exploration into existing follower locations and user interest targeting revealed overseas click farm accounts were following users for cents on the dollar, but providing no engagement support thereafter
Solution: Creating lists of peer accounts, and restricting location targeting to the US, UK, and Canada allowed promoted tweets to reach and attract real followers at an increased cost , but occasionally removing the location restriction added a flood of new followers over a short period of time at a lower CPF
Raid® Brand
The brand campaign promise “Get the Answers” served as the impetus behind the launch of Twitter handle @AskRaid, but user behavior ran contrary to the overarching strategy driving the now defunct account’s creation and messaging
Channel Strategy Pivot
Situation: When Twitter users didn’t proactively tweet questions @AskRaid, the handle took its own proactive approach by searching for existing conversations, and replying with facts and site links; when the option exhausted itself, users remained loath to discuss the details of their bug issues
Insight: Raid® had a value-add media buy to be a Yahoo! Answers Knowledge Partner in the House & Garden category, and the community’s anonymous nature encouraged a glut of unanswered insect and infestation-related questions
Solution: As Yahoo! Answers indexed high in search results, it served as an evergreen repository for crowdsourced knowledge; similar to fact checking post content, a direct line to S.C. Johnson’s Lead Entomologist ensured quick and efficient verification and any additional clarification before answers were shared with the public; leveraging the value-add contributed 102 answers to the site
Prior to Google’s de-prioritization of Yahoo! Answers within its search results, the resource was the top-ranking property for questions typed within the search engine’s query field; prior to the ubiquity of “googling”, an ongoing Jimmy Fallon sketch underscored the relevance and staying power of Yahoo! Answers (until it was shut down in 2021)
