Diabetes UK’s Senior Content Manager, Hannah Reddy, spoke at our latest Relay event, How charity campaigns are more integrated than ever, about the charity’s recent campaign, It’s Missing. The campaign, which was largely created in-house, explored the need for mental health support for people with diabetes and their families.
With over 4.7 million people living with diabetes in the UK, and 7/10 of these feeling overwhelmed with the condition, it was clear the issue needed addressing. As a topic the charity had not covered before, creating a wealth of content around mental health would be a huge challenge – heightened by a limited budget for content creation and digital marketing.
Despite this, the campaign was a huge success due to 3 things: the ‘Hero Hub Help’ approach to content strategy, an internal cross-organisational working group and key audience participation.
The case study lead campaign featured a series of short videos from people who’s mental health had been affected by diabetes, supported by a wealth of medically approved guidance and information. The case studies featured mostly people who were already engaged within the community, and were able to offer help and guidance to others in the comments after the videos were released. The videos were largely user-generated by the beneficiary themselves, adding an authentic insight into their lives. One such case study, Sue’s Story (featured below), was particularly successful, and her story of dealing with her son’s “relentless” condition became one of their most viewed videos, resulting in 1,000 link clicks to the campaign page alone.
The campaign, which is still running, launched in May and has since reached over one million people. With the aim to open up a discussion about the impact on mental health, Diabetes UK have seen a 900% increase in phone calls asking for the support. Despite being promoted mainly organically, the charity has been blown away with the audience engagement and has seen 33,000 visits to the campaign page on their website.
Hannah’s key takeaway? Never underestimate your audience. By listening to audience needs, the ‘It’s Missing’ campaign resulted in incredible engagement for minimal cost.
