Stand Up To Cancer - One Minute Films
TLDL: I applied insight, collaborative working and content design methods to revamp Stand Up To Cancer's approach to video storytelling and smashed KPIs in the process
The problem:
Stand Up To Cancer wanted to create personal story videos that could be showcased on their social media channels during their 2018 campaign. Previous videos hadn’t gained much traction or tangible results for the charity.
My approach:
Looking at audience insight and data from our social media channels, as well as taking inspiration from storytellers outside of the charity sector, I saw we needed to update our approach to video storytelling in order to connect with audiences. So I changed our approach to creating these videos.
1. I identified what stories performed well with our audience
Our audience engaged with our emotional appeal films during television broadcasts. But they preferred seeing posts that had an uplifting, inspiring or cheeky vibe on their social media feed. Short, rough videos shot on mobile phones also performed better than polished to perfection footage. User research revealed a need for taboo and difficult to talk about topics to be shared, as these are not often covered in mainstream content about cancer.
2. I looked for inspiration outside the charity sector
I took a diverse approach to finding inspiration. Going broader helped us identify characteristics of successful content and how to grab the attention of a colder audience.
These two videos below were two of many examples we took inspiration from.
3. Collaboration
I created a working group with reps from our PR Team, Social Media Team and the Media Volunteer Liaison Team. The benefit of getting everyone together meant I could get everyone on the same page with the plan and examples of the stories we were looking for. Aligning our story angles with PR and getting input from the social team helped make sure stories worked well on different channels. Feedback on the final films was also done as a Content Crit to streamline the process.
Our Storytellers
Between them our storytellers were tackling subjects like:
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Blogging about vaginal cancer.
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How hard it can be to admit you’re ill and afraid as a man.
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Having a tattoo after a mastectomy.
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Not letting amputations or childhood leukaemia stop ambition.
We kept the budget relatively small, working with just a 2 person production agency.
The final films
The final films
Having A Mastectomy Tattoo | Stand Up To Cancer
Living With Vaginal Cancer | Stand Up To Cancer
Beating Bowel Cancer | Stand Up To Cancer
Chris' Osteosarcoma Story | Stand Up To Cancer
4. We were agile
With these stories we didn’t take a blanket approach when it came to sharing them on our channels and putting media spend behind them. We tailored our targeting depending on the video and depending on how it performed when we shared it organically. We also trialled splitting the targeting across paid Facebook and Instagram later on in the campaign, which proved beneficial, giving us better cut through on Instagram, and so we continued combined placement for the remaining videos.
The results
The campaign had a reach of 2 million and nearly 1 million views - nearly three times the size of the audience on our Facebook and Instagram channels. Organically the content outperformed the Stand Up To Cancer average, and the paid activity significantly outperformed previous paid campaigns.
Having lots of views and a wide reach was what we were aiming for. And although this was a social first campaign, we actually secured lots of PR coverage for our three women both regionally and nationally.
2m
Reach on paid and organic Facebook and Instagram
1m
Views across Facebook and Instagram
£0.02
Average cost per view for each video
Our learnings didn't stop when the project ended. We applied these learnings to other Stand Up To Cancer projects.
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We shared our learnings with Channel 4 and created an appeal video using UGC content from a cancer vlogger. This video became the campaign's most successful in terms of donations and views.
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We’d trialed taking a full UGC approach and handing the reigns over to media volunteers, with a brief to guide them. This served the campaign well during Covid-19 when filming with cancer patients was not possible.
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We’re reaching out to media volunteers that are actively sharing their stories on social media and engaged with other people within the cancer community. This led to us creating one of our most successful patient stories yet.
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We applied the taboo storytelling approach when pairing cancer patients and Influencers, creating content influencers were keen to share on their own channels.