IBDdefined Social Media Campaign Book by Siyang Liu

Scoial Media Campaign Book

TABLE OF CONTENTS s

Situation Analysis

Objectives

Target Audience

Media Plan

Executions

Evaluation

Limitations

SITUATION ANALYSIS

In collaboration with The Section of Gastroenterology at Boston Medical Center and the Division of Emerging Media Studies at Boston University, we have developed the IBDefined campaign as a tool to decrease the negative stigma ascribed to those suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). With over 1.6 million Americans affected by Crohnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disease or ulcerative colitis, there is a growing need for the public to be educated about IBD. Accordingly, as a means to increase public knowledge, this campaign was designed to prioritize informing the public about the reality of living with IBD. Our genuine hope is that the strategies outlined in the following sections, once employed, will prove effective in raising public consciousness and reducing stigma. The results from our experiment inform the strategy implemented for the IBDefined campaign. The experiment revealed that the inclusion of visual content induced greater affective states among the participants. As a result, this campaign will depend heavily on the production of visuals to augment informative content. The inclusion of videos and infographics are important factors toward inducing emotional responses from the public. Additionally, the preliminary data suggests that individuals with lower levels of IBD knowledge are more likely to feel disgust when

SITUATION ANALYSIS

informed of IBD symptoms. In order to combat these fears and normalize the everyday reality of living with IBD, the campaign seeks to maximize content containing narrative. Initial results show that content containing narrative themes induce significantly more positive effects on attitudes and emotional states. Recognizing the affordances of social media in the digital age, our plan is to host the IBDefined campaign on major social networking accounts. We aim to maximize outreach and engagement by utilizing the Division of Emerging Media Studiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Facebook and Twitter profiles, given their established nexus of influence. We hypothesize that utilizing social networking accounts with even broader networks (i.e. number of followers) and spheres of influence (i.e. rapport with other influencers) will yield even greater results (audience engagement) from the campaign. We would like to thank Jason Reich, M.D. and Ling Guo, M.D. for their council throughout the development stage of this campaign. As a result of their vision and continuous enthusiasm, guidance, and support, the IBDefined campaign was afforded a great opportunity for success.

OBJECTIVES

There are three reasons why IBDefined was selected as the campaign title. 1. It incorporates the IBD acronym. In an effort to introduce IBD to the lexicon of public discourse, the inclusion of this acronym is important to familiarizing the network with the title. 2. It reflects the nature of the campaign. To define something is to describe its nature, scope, and meaning. Using defined as a stem word emphasizes the campaign’s intentions to disseminate factual and insightful content about IBD. Using defined in the title may seem direct but goal transparency will encourage learning-conscious engagement. 3. It’s tailored for recall. Choosing a phrase that incorporates the name of the disease and reflects the nature of the campaign are relatively simple tasks. To seamlessly merge those aspects to create a title that’s memorable and concise is more challenging. We believe this phrase IBDefined does both. Easy to say. Easy to remember.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Our target audience ranges in age between 18-29 years old. Within this demographic, our focus will be primarily the younger demographic in the Greater Boston area (such as students and young professionals) who lack the knowledge or have misunderstandings of IBD. We want to use Boston as a pilot study first, and then expand our audience globally in the future. Based on our primary research, the Pew Research Center (2017) showed that individuals between 18-29 years old have the most frequent usage of social media in the United States. A recent study (Groshek et al., 2016) mentioned that 62% of Americans have used their smartphones to obtain healthrelated information. Therefore, our audience should be willing to spend time on social media and search health-related information online. Moreover, they will be interested in engaging in health-related events by using social media channels.

Boston

Global

TARGET AUDIENCE

PERSONA Based on the previous research, we have developed a user persona, a model of our target audience. Tony is originally from Wisconsin. He is a senior at Boston University College of Communication. Tony usually spends 2-3 hours on social media including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. He likes to post pictures and share interesting videos online. He has limited knowledge of IBD. One of Tony’s roommate’s friends has IBD, so he has heard of some basic terminology and facts regarding the disease. However, Tony doesn’t know the detailed information of IBD such as symptoms of IBD, what it’s like to live with IBD, or have a correct perception of the associated treatment procedures.

MEDIA PLAN

MEDIA MIX The overarching goal of this campaign is to increase the awareness of IBD among young people and reduce the negative stigma associated with IBD. We chose “IBDefined” as the theme of the campaign. According to our experiment study, more than 50% people don’t know what IBD stands for and lack basic knowledge of it. More importantly, we found that visual elements are more effective in educating people and evoke positive emotions in individuals viewing the content. Therefore, we plan to create visual content such as informative videos and infographics that can be posted online and shared across different social media platforms. Additionally, we want to use an offline on-campus event to promote people’s social media engagement around IBD Day. 1. VIDEOS Interview video: We decided to create a short interview video which gives insight into individuals; knowledge about IBD. Interviewees were randomly chosen around Boston University. They were asked several questions related to IBD, such as “Have you heard of inflammatory bowel disease?”, “What symptoms do you think IBD patients have?”, “Do you know if the disease is curable or

MEDIA PLAN

not?â&#x20AC;? At the end of the video, the answers of those questions are presented to help spread IBD knowledge and reduce peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stigma about IBD. The video will be shared on multiple BU EMS media channels like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. The video will ideally resonate with the audience and be further disseminated on social media via shares. Informative video: As stated in our literature review, we proposed that media messages that contain visual metaphors are more effective in explaining a kind of disease and spreading knowledge of it in a health communication campaign, we decided to create an informative video using motion graphics and visual metaphors to introduce IBD to the general public who may be unfamiliar with it. The video is primarily informative, providing the audience with basic knowledge of IBD such as what IBD is, the general situation of IBD in the U.S., the causes of IBD, the symptoms of IBD, the financial and psychological burdens of IBD patients. The video also presents the facts of IBD in a graphic fashion, which engages the audience. The video will be posted on video channels such as YouTube and Vimeo. In addition, it will be shared on multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The video should familiarize the audience with IBD and resonate the with audience in hopes to share the video within their own networks.

MEDIA PLAN

2. ON-CAMPUS EVENT: STAMP OUT STIGMA In order to promote social media engagement of the campaign, we plan to hold an on-campus event titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Stamp Out Stigmaâ&#x20AC;? in the first week of Fall 2017 at Boston University. The event aims to engage college students in learning IBD offline and sharing their experience online. We will create flyers that present IBD basic knowledge and blank quiz cards with IBD-related questions. We will also provide stamps of the answers including texts and graphics. After reading the flyers, students can stamp their answers on the question cards. They can post pictures of the cards on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook by using #IBDefined and #StampOutStigma, and tagging EMS program official accounts. They will get a chance to receive a Starbucks gift card as incentives.

MEDIA PLAN

MEDIA SCHEDULE

Videos - will be posted online before a week of IBD Day Stamp Out Stigma Event - the first week of Fall 2017 (September, 2017)

MEDIA PLAN

BUDGET

Total: $685.85

EXECUTIONS

LOGO DESIGN

The logo of this campaign consists of an icon and the text “IBDefined”. The inspiration of logo icon comes from the bowel. Since IBD is a disease that affects the bowels and GI tract, , we use the shape of bowel to explain what IBD stands for and hope to raise people’s awareness of IBD. In terms of coloring choose, we use the dark blue to express the pain that IBD patients might have in their daily lives.

EXECUTIONS

INTERVIEW VIDEO We interviewed 15 random strangers on Boston University campus. Among the interviewees, 5 of them are males and 10 are females. About two third of the interviewees have heard of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, but most of them are uncertain about specific knowledge of IBD, such as if IBD is curable or not, where does IBD take place. When asked about “what symptoms do you think patients with IBD have”, answer that appeared the most frequently was “go to bathroom frequently.” The interview reflects that people only have limited knowledge about IBD. However, most of them showed empathy and understanding towards IBD patients.

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=nkjHJ4lmsFI

EXECUTIONS

INFORMATIVE VIDEO The video content is divided into four parts. We used numbers in large font size to attract audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyeballs. A lot of animated visuals of different parts of human body where IBD symptoms occur were shown to the audience to make the complex symptoms easier to understand. We also showed a bar chart of the average annual direct and indirect cost per IBD patient to give the audience a sense of the heavy financial burden of IBD patients. At the very end of the video is a call to action that encourages the audience to learn about IBD and care about IBD. We also put the hashtag #IBDefined of our social media campaign to attract traffic to our campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=m0AiR1IepYo

EXECUTIONS

STAMP OUT STIGMA EVENT We created four questions for the quiz card, asking “What does IBD stand for?” “What symptoms do you think the patients have?” “What are the causes of IBD?” and “Where does IBD largely take place?” The answers can be founded in the flyer. In order to making fun of the event, we put answers to the stamps and added some graphics such as small icons and emojis. Students can use the stamps to answer the questions and decorate the quiz card. We chose three locations at Boston University to hold the event: the lobby of College of Communication, the 1st floor of GSU, and Warren Tower.

EXECUTIONS

SAMPLE TWEETS

EXECUTIONS

SAMPLE TWEETS

EXECUTIONS

SAMPLE TWEETS

EVALUATION

Videos: • YouTube - the number of likes and shares • Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram - the number of likes, shares, and reposts. On-campus event: • The number of distribution of the quiz cards and flyers • Social media posts that used #IBDefined and tagged EMS accounts We will keep tracking the engagement of the campaign in the summer. After 3 months of launching the social media campaign, we will use Sysomos to do data analysis by searching the keywords “#IBDefined”. When we get the results, we will know the effectiveness of the campaign strategies and how to make improvements.

LIMITATIONS Our campaign strategies did not contain patients’ self-narrative stories. Patients’ personal stories might evoke general public’s empathy and help them learn more about IBD. Currently, since we only use @EMSatBU to tweet and promote our campaign, so it might not be influential enough to target at more audience. In addition, due to limited amount of time and resources, our offline event was only able to reach out to students at Boston University. For the future work, we would like to continue developing a more complex and well rounded event that targets a larger audience in order to study the tangible and intangible advantages. Another limitation is that we won’t be able to hold the on-campus event on IBD Day (May 19th, 2017) because of the time conflict with Boston University graduation ceremony. Alternatively, we could increase the awareness of our campaign through tweeting our original content, retweeting and interacting with other IBD official accounts, such as @Crohn’sColitisUK and @ CrohnsColitisFn. In the future, we will make improvements based on our evaluation of the campaign effectiveness. We want to use Boston as a pilot study first. If the campaign gets a higher effectiveness in Boston, we can implement Facebook Advertising and paid SEO to expand our campaign globally.