Blog post from two weeks ago: DaVita Clinical Research and #InspiredToHelp

Talking about successful social media campaigns... a pretty difficult task given that we mostly remember campaigns that failed and backfired. And that's okay, because it's funny. We'd rather remember someone sharing their funny #MCDstory instead of dealing with the problems of African children by tweeting about the #waterislife campaign.

A very dificult topic to talk about is healthcare, especially when it comes to long-term diseases. DaVita Clinical Research is focussing its work on kidney diseases and launched a social media campaign in March 2014. DaVita Clinical Research is a research institution for kidney diseases that is always looking for participants in their trials and is encouraging scientific exchange.

The campaign contained he hashtag #InspiredToGive and created eighteen videos with (former) participants talking about their experiences with clinical trials and (most importantly) what inspired them to gie their time to clinical research. It allowed participants as well as researchers to share videos and pictures from their experiences with DaVita.

At the same time, DaVita asked communities what inspired them to give back. The results can be seen on their Instagram and Youtube channels. The overall message of the campaign was that anyone can participate in clinical trials and the personal appoach was chosen quite nicely, because audiences are tired of healthcare companies talking TO them. There is not enough caffeine in the world to stay awake during another "We need you for research"-campaign by some big medical association. If there is, on the other hand, content that shows real people talking about their real life experiences with clinical trials, trust-building videos of good-looking researchers and community representatives that talk about how much a clinical trial supports public health, you are more likely drawn to search for more information about that particular institution.

Healthcare companies suffer from a serious lack of trust which is reflected in decreasing participation numbers. In that case it is just a great idea to meet the public's concerns with every-day testimonials and trustworthy statements about how rewarding it is to help sick people by participating in a clinical trial.