Best of CASE District II Award
 

Institution: Western University

Title of entry: COVIDNext

About this entry: A year and a half into the pandemic, as the world continued to grapple with COVID-19’s widespread implications, experts across Western University were identifying issues and contributing to solutions.

At a time when most institutions were in a constant state of reactive communications, Western Communications shifted the dialogue to the important work of its researchers. Through an engaging integrated marketing campaign, Western told the story of how we are committed to uncovering the pandemic’s impact on society, and how we can move past this to create a safer, healthier, more sustainable and more equitable post-pandemic world.

The COVIDNext advertising campaign was the first of Western’s efforts focused exclusively on brand awareness. With that in mind, we measured its success through overall brand exposure—including researcher engagement, advertising, social/digital impressions, media hits and microsite traffic. This series was a unique opportunity to build our brand and enhance our reputation as a leading Canadian research-intensive university through a compelling content series.

Over this eight-week campaign, we generated 1,947,821 social impressions, 18,755 web page views, 171,865 video views and 2,869,571 digital impressions through the Globe and Mail. We reached an average of 1,727,000 Globe and Mail print readers each Saturday and received earned media from 26 news articles featuring Western researchers.

By telling the stories of the important research that was happening behind the scenes at Western, this communications campaign broke through the COVID-messaging clutter, renewed community hope and positioned Western as a research powerhouse.