Dialysis Patient Citizens (DPC) Launches Kidney Care Matters Campaign
Background:
Kidney Care Matters is an initiative led by Dialysis Patient Citizens (DPC) to promote better kidney care through care coordination for people with End-Stage Renal Disease. For DPC, their top legislative goal was getting the BETTER Kidney Care Act introduced and passed. They partnered with us to develop an entirely new brand and public awareness campaign to pair with their ongoing lobbying work.
Challenge:
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Undoubtedly, companies and issue organizations will face a regulatory or legislative burden/opportunity where there is a need to create a separately branded entity or coalition for focusing attention on a single issue. This can be a tall task to quickly create a brand out of thin air, generate content to engage supporters, and remain cognizant of the legislative calendar. This is when many clients like DPC turn to us to breathe life into these campaigns.
Strategy:
DEVELOP A NEW BRAND
In order to have an identity for the campaign, we worked with DPC to develop the “Kidney Care Matters” brand and logo design
CREATE A WEBSITE
We created a website with all of the important information and resources visitors could easily access to learn more about the legislative effort and take action
FILM STORIES
One of the most important aspects of this campaign was capturing and re-telling real life stories of dialysis patients. We had the opportunity to film patients so that their stories would be featured on the website and in advertisements
Generate Awareness and Activity
Finally, we coordinated an extensive paid media campaign to generate grassroots engagement and lawmaker awareness.
Execution:
Logo/Brand Development
GBM’s design team created the entire brand for this campaign. This included providing the DPC team with several options for determining the logo and overall style of Kidney Care Matters. The full logo and brand guidelines package allowed for the client to easily maintain consistent branding across all other branded assets for the campaign.
Website
The https://www.kidneycarematters.org/ website was designed to be a simple and engaging educational resource for visitors. It featured testimonials recorded and produced by the GBM video production team, news articles associated with the earned media effort, other educational resources, and tools for visitors to engage and show their support for the effort.
Video Production
A major component of the campaign was to capture real stories from patients discussing their experiences with kidney failure and the need for federal help. GBM’s video production team conducted in-person interviews with two patients, filmed those interviews, and edited the videos into 1m+ versions for use on the website as well as 30s and 15s versions for advertising placements. These videos are currently being considered for awards by peer organizations and were some of the best performing advertisements for the campaign over the course of several months.
Advertising
A large focus of the Kidney Care Matters campaign was using paid media to generate awareness and support for their legislative goals. This included:
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Facebook was the largest portion of the advertising campaign and was multifaceted, promoting a wide range of content targeting several key audiences.
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Video Views - DPC’s testimonials provided credible and authentic voices to their campaign so it was critical to get as many eyeballs on these stories as possible
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Advocacy Actions - GBM’s expertise in driving online conversions at a low cost lead to the campaign generating 75,000+ conversions on DPC memberships, petition signatures, email sign-ups, and constituent emails
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Direct Publisher Placement - It’s no surprise that policy influencers and federal legislators were a critical audience for the campaign. After analyzing web traffic data for a number of publishers, GBM decided to dedicate ad dollars to a high value placement on the healthcare section of Politico’s website. During the flight of this placement, visitors would only see DPC’s advertisement, resulting in 1M+ views of the ads and over 1,100 clicks to the Kidney Care Matters website from the campaign’s most important audience.
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Print Ads - To reinforce awareness with the policy influencer and legislator audience, print ads were executed on two Capitol Hill focused publications, The Hill and Roll Call. These papers are delivered to every Hill office and most federal agencies so they presented another medium to elevate the importance of DPC’s message
Results:
The Kidney Care Matters effort resulted in the BETTER Kidney Care Act being introduced at the end of 2020 equating to a substantial win considering the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the bill did not pass during a lame duck session of Congress, the campaign to drive awareness, engagement, and ultimate action from lawmakers was a success.
