Funny beats white papers and policy briefs Our experience using creative tools to interest people in

1
Funny beats white papers and policy briefsOur
experience using creative tools to interest
people in health care reform

• Rob Schneider
• Health Action 2007
• January 16, 2007

2
Overview of CU campaigns

• Narrower focus but on issues that educate about
  bigger problems
  
• SHI works for disclosure of hospital infection
  rates but also points out problems with patient
  safety and quality of care
  
• Our micro-sites are designed for recruitment
• narrow take action focus/high conversion rate
• immediate actionno distractions
• easy email opt-in
• We use email as a way to tell the story of our
  campaign, retain activists and as campaign tool
  we direct people to specialized pages by email

3
Identify, Educate, Mobilize

• Identify
• Identify volunteers who will do more work
• Identify civic leaders in the district who can
  communicate directly with elected officials
  
• Identify people who have personal, compelling
  stories
  
• Identify people with leadership and practical
  skills who can inspire/train others
  
• Educate
• Give them good information about various issues
  and ways they can help and repeat the messages
  over time.
  
• Provide basic training in civic process through
  stories of success, through possible
  on-the-ground training in some limited contexts
  
• Mobilize
• Email to get them to send emails and make phone
  calls
  
• Phone them to get them to make phone calls at a
  higher rate and possibly do district visits
  
• Mail them with additional information that they
  can use to make their phone calls or start to
  meet others in their community
  
• Encourage meetups and other forms of face to face
  communication with clear action goals
  
• Provide virtual community tools where people can
  edit fact sheets, flyers, letters to legislators
  etc with their own local information
  

4
Health care advocatesWonks Wule!

• Recent reports on health care reform
• Illustrating the Potential Impacts of Adverse
  Selection on Health Insurance Costs in Consumer
  Choice Models, November 2006
  
• Health Care Spending in the United States and
  OECD Countries, January 2007 
  
• This paper analyzes data on health spending and
  national income from the Organisation for
  Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
  countries with above-average per capita national
  income.  We exclude countries with relatively low
  per capita income because they have fewer
  resources to devote to health care and other
  necessities and do not provide a reasonable
  comparison for spending in higher income
  countries.  We have provided footnotes where the
  OECD data show a break in series, indicating that
  the OECD data may not be comparable over the
  entire period that is being analyzed Germany is
  excluded from the time series exhibits because
  its data are not comparable over the time periods
  due to reunification.  The level of total health
  expenditure per capita is shown in U.S. dollars,
  adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP).  Data
  on growth rates and health care as a percentage
  of GDP are based upon the national currency of
  each country, with growth rates adjusted to
  remove the impact of general inflation.
• Benefit Design and Formularies of Medicare Drug
  Plans A Comparison of 2006 and 2007 Offerings --
  November 2006
  

5
Rx Drugs Funny?

• We wanted to find a way to get public attention
  on serious problems drug safety drug costs
  
• Fake drug ads with bizarre side effects are
  they different from real drug ads with real side
  effects?

6
How did we come up with the song?

• We knew some Lounge Lizards
• Warning funny bands can be raunchy
• We provided ideas for themes, the band drafted,
  we reviewed
  
• We didnt make a lot of edits
• Important to let funny people be funny
• Put the wonky stuff on the page, but dont kill
  the creativity
  
• Did search for animation companies
• Picked them based on their work on other topics

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Animation promotionThe Drugs I Need by the
Austin Lounge Lizards
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What did we do to make the song successful?

• The band and the animators did work that only
  they can docome up with a great product for us
  to promote (a 4 5 month process)
  
• Four people compiled a list of 200 health and
  general interest blogs, then promoted the song by
  sending individualized email pitches to each
  blogger with followup communications as bloggers
  responded individually.
• Two people worked for a week on the action pages
  to ensure smooth flow of traffic/action-taking
  opportunities before and after viewing, clear
  simple message and adequate bandwidth for peak
  traffic.
• One person translated animation graphics into
  other media formats for use by the press, for use
  on our site, for republishing on CD, and other
  ongoing promotion.
• One person handled creative contracts, request
  for permission to use for other purposes,
  redistribution contracts, email-based paid
  promotion.

9
The results

• March 1, 2005 we launched the animation/MP3 song
  campaign to spread the word about prescription
  drug reform.
  
• Since then, more than 2 million unique views
  and it keeps getting hits.
  
• More than 200 blogs linked to it, then it got
  picked up by JibJab
  
• Run on the Today Show, two articles in the New
  York Times, lots of ancillary media coverage

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Does one more funny animationmatter, and how do
you tell?

• 30 K people emailed Congress to support drug
  safety legislation more than half were new
  
• 10K new people opted in to get our email in the
  future 40 of the new opt-ins are already repeat
  action takers
  
• More difficult to estimate the effect of 2
  million people downloading
  
• People love it, people use it in conferences and
  credit us.
  

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So if it was a success,why was it a success?

• Does getting on the Today Show bring in
  e-activists or produce communications to
  lawmakers?
  
• 77 came to us from email solicitation
• 23 brought from unknown sources including blog
  postings.
  
• Is the bigger benefit P.R.?
• What is the value of buzz?
• Or is the real benefit of creatives something
  else?
  

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Why it worked

• A bit of luck
• An unexpected group did something really funny
• A really talented group of really funny artists
• An outline, but not a lot of interference with
  their work
  
• A whole lot of outreach internet and
  traditional media