THE CHALLENGE
Once every ten years, the residents of Brighton and Hove are called on to fill out an important community health and wellness survey, the results of which help to inform vital decisions about future health and well-being services that may be required to meet residents’ needs.
Having previously worked with the University of Brighton, the lead stakeholder for the survey, we were entrusted with ensuring that as many residents took part in the survey as possible.
The Health Counts 2024 survey was a quick survey with the potential to make a massive impact by shaping the services Brighton & Hove residents receive. Without it, their voices might go unheard, leaving their needs unmet by decision and policymakers.
As a local, independent agency, it was our duty to lend our expertise to this once-in-a-decade survey.
The main players
The survey was a collaboration of several agencies. The University of Brighton were commissioned by Brighton & Hove City Council to develop and promote the survey, and analyse the findings. In addition, the following organisations were key stakeholders in the campaign, and representatives were involved at each stage:
- NHS Sussex
- Healthwatch Brighton & Hove
- Brighton and Sussex Medical School
- Brighton & Hove Foundation
- Brighton & Hove City Council
Our goals started with building awareness through a creative branding project, with the final goal to be survey completions with the following KPI’s:
- Effectively reach our target segments at scale
- Achieve 10,000 survey completions
- Reach our goals within four short weeks
Building the Health Counts brand
The first mission was to create a strong identity for the 2024 survey to ensure it caught the attention of residents. Our Head of Creative met this challenge head-on by meeting with all the involved stakeholders across the campaign landscape in a creative ideation workshop.
Ideas began to come to life in the form of mood boards, which helped us determine an understanding of which illustration-led approach would be best for this campaign. We kept an open line of communication with our clients, constantly getting insightful feedback that allowed us to create assets that had a clear feeling of being for residents and not tourists, so that our campaign was not mistaken for promotional materials aimed at visitors.
Mood boards progressed into Stylescapes and soon, campaign illustration-led visuals were solidified. We landed on a graphic hand-drawn by our Head of Creative which resonated with Brighton & Hove’s bohemian culture whilst giving a nod to well-recognised colours in Brighton, like the blue railings along the seafront.
The Strategy
With an eye-catching creative in hand, we had limited time to make a huge impact. Having only four weeks to run our campaign, we hit the ground running by focusing on reaching our target segments via Facebook, Instagram, and Google Display. We devised a targeting strategy for our audience through interest-based communities, contextual, demographic, lookalike and geographic targeting.
To build up awareness, we utilised the vast targeting power of Google Display and Meta, focusing on interest-based targeting such as; local community news, different social causes, and health and wellness.
However, when we saw that this was restricting potential numbers, we quickly adapted and prioritised the budget to be more in favour of demographic targeting, opening up our search to the wider public.
Driving Survey Completions
Staying constantly in communication with our clients, we were able to share and receive real-time, data-driven result updates. Midway through the campaign, we were informed that the survey completions were heavily skewed towards older residents, not reflecting Brighton & Hove’s median age of 38.
We quickly pivoted to target 18-25-year-olds, using demographic targeting on Google Display and Meta. We also weighed budgets towards mobile devices for better conversion with younger users.
In addition, we optimised the messaging to appeal more to the younger generation and added a raffle for a £100 voucher as a monetary incentive, knowing that this would entice younger residents to participate.
Optimisation
As we continued to track the number of surveys completed, we noticed that certain postcode areas in the city had low survey submission rates. We couldn’t allow this as it was crucial to receive information from every postcode in Brighton & Hove to get an accurate representation of the needs of the cities’ residents. So, we got to work, building a new campaign to target residents within a 1km radius of these high-priority postcodes. Overlaying the map with the postcodes, we ensured our targeting was spot on, and felt confident that our campaign would now be effectively targeting each unique postcode of the city.
But we didn’t stop there.
With the mission to get eyes on our creative, we devised a media plan that allowed for further impactful tactics within the community it is based. Therefore, we also devised a local media plan, creating portal pull-up banners, leaflets, posters, landscape plasma, and large OOH vertical ads. These were strategically placed around central Brighton, each with a unique QR code directing visitors to Health Counts’ landing page so we could track results.
Courtesy of Professor Nigel Sherriff
Results
Through our multichannel approach, the Health Counts Survey 2024 achieved over 26,014 survey completions – that is over a 940% increase in survey completions compared to the previous survey results.
Via paid media alone we also achieved:
- Over 1.06 million impressions
- 4.4k clicks
- 361 survey competitions
- A strong conversion rate of 8.21%
- CPA of £10.52
These 26k survey submissions will allow Brighton & Hove to make informed decisions through data-driven policy-making, improving the overall well-being of residents with long-term benefits, which will continue to be felt by future generations.
Despite a tight budget and just four weeks, we are proud to have contributed to making Brighton & Hove a place where all residents’ needs are addressed, including mental health services and support networks. Through Arke’s diligent and thorough approach, the Health Counts Survey 2024 stakeholders can now make data-driven decisions that will impact residents and future generations.
We were thrilled to be a part of a critical campaign that may influence the well-being of Brighton & Hove residents, and look forward to the potential to bring positive change to our local community.
