Brand awareness campaign: 375 million impressions and counting

In its first phase, the AOA’s brand awareness campaign has yielded 375 million impressions. That’s one key number William J. Burke, DO, who chairs the AOA’s brand awareness task force, shared with the AOA’s House of Delegates when he provided an update on the campaign’s success since its launch.

Meet the audience

After defining a target audience of health-involved patients in their 30s and 40s and medically underserved patients, the campaign’s organizers sought out this audience through national magazines, digital and social media and paid search advertisements. The campaign also leveraged localized advertising in Indianapolis and Orlando, Florida.

In addition to health care consumers, DOs and students are another key audience for the campaign, Dr. Burke noted: “We want this campaign to foster pride and enthusiasm in the profession and to empower all DOs and students to do their part to raise awareness.”

Key stats

Dr. Burke shared these statistics from the campaign’s first phase, which ran from October 2015 through May 2016:

• The campaign overall, including print, digital and targeted local advertising, has generated 375 million impressions.
• Website traffic from Indianapolis increased 50% and Find Your DO searches jumped 20% after one month of out-of-home advertising there.
• Prospective patients have performed 314,000 Find Your DO searches and logged 532,000 visits to DoctorsThatDO.org since the campaign launched.

How consumers are responding

So far, the campaign has generated strong results, Dr. Burke said. “For consumers who were exposed to our online campaign, there was an 11% lift in favorability, which exceeds industry averages for health campaigns like ours,” he noted.

In its second phase, Dr. Burke said, the national awareness campaign will bring out-of-home advertising to Charlotte, North Carolina; Hartford, Connecticut; and Phoenix, Arizona. The print and digital campaigns will continue, with more focus on health-based publications, and the campaign will advertise at the New York City Marathon and Chicago Marathon this fall.

“The Board of Trustees is very pleased with the results of this campaign, particularly with the momentum and excitement that continue to build throughout our profession,” Dr. Burke told the House of Delegates. “We hope that you love this campaign as much as we do.”