Already the online brand experts for GE, frog design was ready to apply its skills to new efforts, leading a major multimedia campaign for public awareness of GE Healthcare. The challenge was to make people take notice of personal health issues, leveraging GE’s authority in the field to promote the concept of Early Health: a daily emphasis on disease prevention and early detection.
GE pictures a world without disease and is undertaking constant research to make that happen. In the meantime, it recognizes and encourages the centrality of healthy choices in our daily lives. A promotion of GE Healthcare was a promotion of immediacy, a celebration of healthy choices in the moment, an exchange of ideas and inspiration. With this in mind, frog set out to create an informative, interactive campaign that would allow these ideas to be shared between individuals: from company to consumer, from friend to friend. Our research showed that the Internet was perceived as the most trusted media source for healthcare information, and that people all over the world were seeking advice from others in web-based forums. We wanted to tap into the existing behaviors of these online health-seekers by providing an entertaining and encouraging framework of health, advocacy, and prevention information – a place where healthy living is lauded as a global imperative.
frog decided to run a multi-platform operation that would focus on community, targeting individuals both online and in-person to put a face to the conversation. We crafted a way to do exactly that, designing the “Picture a Healthy World” campaign – a snapshot collection of positive health ideas. Our design team created a website that allowed users to easily upload photos and testimonials about their own healthy choices: everything from eating soy to giving up cigarettes, from dancing to driving safely. The stories and images would let viewers connect to each other and to a healthier life.
These efforts were paired with a live promotion in Times Square on April 7, 2006, World Health Day, in which the advice and photos submitted online were displayed on the Reuters billboard. A center of the modern world, Times Square offered prime visibility, with over one million daily visitors and rich media exposure. GE took over the center island with tents, camera crews, and signage. All material – from hand-outs to costumes, from online ads to billboard animation – was designed by frog. “Street-teams” met passersby with informative pocket guides, water bottles, and conversation, but above all, with the opportunity to share their own healthy choices. Live photos and personal statements were taken and projected onto an unprecedented nine digital billboards lining the south-facing side of Times Square. Times Square became a wall of faces, a digitally-advanced public discussion of personal health choices. A record of the little things we do that can make a big difference down the road.
We further advertised the promotion with six international homepage takeovers on Yahoo!; additional media on WebMD, Discovery Health, iVillage; and geo-targeted ads for the New York City metropolitan area.
A phenomenal 1,083 photos were taken at the Times Square event and uploaded to the website, breaking all of Reuters' previous records for a live broadcast event. During the first two months of the promotion, more than 230,000 visitors from 195 countries viewed the site, contributing over 6,000 “healthful” photos and stories to ge.com/health – a response eight times greater than the industry average. GE’s live event on World Health Day made the papers, the blogs, and a “New York Minute” on Fox 5's evening newscast. Media coverage also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, PR Week, and Promo Magazine.
