NW ADASS

Think have worked with The North West Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (NW ADASS) for over 2 years. Initially we were commissioned to help develop an internal comms strategy, but as the pandemic struck, priorities shifted. Local authorities anticipated a 25-50% reduction in adult social care staffing due to the pandemic. This is due to isolation and sickness, leading to a potential loss of up to half of the workforce. This would put some of the most vulnerable people in our communities at risk.

‘Step into Social Care’ is our third marketing campaign for NW ADASS. It targets the 18-35 age group, especially school and college leavers facing career choices.

Through this campaign, our goal was to challenge perceptions of social care and highlight the diverse individuals social care staff work with. We aimed to convey the aspirational and fun aspects of social care, breaking down stereotypes of those who require support.

In our approach for the first two campaigns, our goal was to include text in bold, illustrative styles. This was to stand out against visual clutter. As we conducted our initial research, we identified the need to make the content more exciting and dynamic to engage our target demographic effectively. We selected the channels that our audience frequently uses. Our focus was on TikTok for under 21s, Instagram for 22-25s and both Instagram and Facebook, for ages 26 and above.

We designed a campaign encouraging our audience to create their own story and #stepintosocialcare, using a popular TikTok/Instagram user-generated format in ‘a day in the life of.’ With the help of NW ADASS, Think recruited young care workers to produce their own footage to tell the positive stories of their day. The videos were edited by Think to encourage applications. Stills of the campaign creative were also used across all channels to build visibility and awareness.

A campaign microsite was designed to create consistency in the journey, maintain engagement, improve UX and ultimately drive applications.

The campaign has been a resounding success with local authorities commenting that it was ‘fantastic.’

We ran an 8-week campaign, with Christmas in between, which resulted in a reach of 595k, 41k likes, 8k website visitors and 125 applications. This equals a 1.5% conversion rate, an exceptional achievement for a sector notoriously hard to recruit for, especially with a younger audience.

We can confidently say that the campaign surpassed all expectations. Due to its success, we planned to refresh the creative and run it again later in the year.