Winner: Baylor Scott & White Health - #HeartTXLive: First Ever Live Twitter Coverage of a Heart Transplant
Baylor Scott & White Health's corporate public relations and social team live tweeted a heart transplant surgery—the first time a heart transplant would ever appear as it happens on social media channels to bring attention to the transplant program at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas as well as share resources about organ donation with the large audience that would naturally follow an event like this live.
By leveraging real-time storytelling to depict a unique patient narrative from inside the operating room, the team expected to benefit from increased mentions on Twitter and convince members of the audience to volunteer to be organ donors.
While other hospitals have performed live "Twitter surgeries," none had taken the risk of covering such a complicated procedure as a heart transplant – or an organ transplant from a deceased donor – live on social media.
During the surgery, two social media team members and photographers stationed in the OR began posting photos, video, and tweets on Twitter to explain the events prior to the heart transplant surgery as well as what was happening live.
The goals of this campaign included building national awareness of the Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas heart transplant program, recently ranked as the second largest in the country, by generating more than 1 million impressions on Twitter and increasing the number of organ donor registrations in the state of Texas by at least 20 percent.
Following the #HeartTXLive event, there was a nearly 30 percent increase in organ donor registrations in the state of Texas, which was all attributed to the #HeartTXLive event.
In all, 1.34 million people across the country saw the live tweets and watched the surgery unfold on Twitter during the five day period surrounding the #HeartTXLive event. The @BaylorHealth Twitter account also gained 252 new followers through the event.
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