Winners: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center - Shake It Off and SheKnows Media - #HatchKids
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center - Shake It Off
Every year, the flu virus leads to 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths in the United States. To that end, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston sought to convey the importance of flu prevention during the winter months and encourage everyone to do their part to reduce the number of cases, both inside and outside the hospital.
A diverse group of BIDMC staff—including members of the hospital’s flu vaccination steering committee, infection control team and communications and marketing department—came up with the idea for a music video parody starring employees from across the hospital. And what song could be better for them to sing and dance to than a parody of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off?” ...with new lyrics about washing your hands and getting your flu shot, of course.
The video was introduced to staff through a community-wide email and feature story on the hospital intranet linking to the video on YouTube. The video was also shared through Facebook and Twitter.
Overnight, the video got thousands of hits, and local media took notice. As word spread, the hospital was taking calls from The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and local television stations. The hospital proactively reached out to NBC, which liked it so much that it shared with its affiliates. The video was seen on NBC stations in 22 states and appeared on Today.com. Becker’s Hospital Review, a respected hospital industry publication, also shared the video, which brought it to the attention of other hospitals, who were excited to share this fun way of talking to their staff and patients about flu and infection prevention.
In addition to the national media coverage the video and its public health message received, it has been viewed more than 68,000 times on YouTube since it debuted, with many positive comments (unusual for anything posted on the internet) and more than 250 likes.
SheKnows Media - #HatchKids
When Sheryl Sandberg launched her largely unpopular "Ban Bossy" campaign in 2014 that subscribed to the thought that the word bossy should be eliminated from conversations with young girls, SheKnows Media realized an opportunity: No one had bothered to speak to girls—and boys—to understand whether they had a negative perception of the word.
SheKnows Media took action and interviewed teen and tween boys and girls on video about what they thought of when they heard the word bossy. The results were eye-opening: As it turned out, kids didn't have a negative association with the word, nor did they think it was used predominantly to describe girls.
The video took off and was featured in a variety of top publications. SheKnows Media, which serves an audience of nearly 90 million women each month, also found that its audience craved that type of content. SheKnows Media felt obligated to explore more topics that might interest parents and adults from kids' perspectives and decided to launch a cause-related digital storytelling and media literacy program called #HatchKids in October 2014.
The #HatchKids program's mission is "content made for grown-ups by kids on a mission." Since it launched, the SheKnows Media Hatch team has produced upwards of 40 videos that center around cause-related topics like teenage substance use, the importance of empathy (emphasizing Caitlin Jenner's transformation), micro-aggressions, feminism, male gender stereotypes, social media anxiety, and child hunger in the U.S.
The #HatchKids playlist on YouTube is SheKnows Media's most watched. The 37 video workshops have generated more than 4 million views. The kids' insights are often poignant and attract the attention of top-tier press. To date, more than 65 outlets aside from SheKnows Media have covered #HatchKids videos, including U.S. Weekly, People, TIME, Adweek, Upworthy, Glamour, CNN, The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, to name a few.
Honorable Mentions:
- athenahealth - Let Doctors Be Doctors
- FGL Sports Ltd. (Sport Chek) - Stamkos vs. Drone
- Munchkin Inc. - Orcas Live in Oceans
- Time Warner Cable - TWC Uses Drone to Reconnect Texas Flood Victims