Cover Story: New Media … Same Strategy

Music says the birthdays campaign is “designed to put a brand promise out there to help people understand that we’re here and our job is to save lives.”
ACS does that in four ways, she explains:

• “We help people stay well by giving them info on guidelines and lifestyle changes that they can do to prevent cancer;
• “We help them get well — if they happen to be diagnosed with cancer, we will be there with information to help them make informed decisions about their treatment and how to get through the experience;
• “We continue to look for cures through our research program and helping the larger cancer community get enough money to find cures for cancer;
• “And we fight back, advocating for new laws and legislation that will help people stay well and get well.

“So that’s really what the new campaign is based on — that promise of saving lives in those four ways,” Music adds.

Since the campaign launched on April 20, more than 37,000 people have declared the American Cancer Society the official sponsor of their birthdays at morebirthdays.com. And in the first week following the campaign launch, more than 6,100 people on Facebook did the same.

“Our goal is to have 50,000 by the end of [May],” Music says. “I think that it’s been a great success so far. We’ve gotten extremely good feedback from the people who have signed up and have seen the campaign. We’ve not seen a huge uptick in dollars from the campaign yet, but it’s not like we’ve made a big ask on this. We really wanted to get people engaged with us.”

But first …
The birthdays campaign isn’t ACS’ first foray into Web 2.0. In addition to its own Web 2.0 initiatives like the Cancer Survivors Network (cancer.org/csn), which was started in July 2000 and has about 80,000 registrants, some of its first efforts included a blog by Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Len Lichtenfeld (cancer.org/drlen) launched in 2005 and its official YouTube channel (youtube.com/amercancersociety) launched in 2007. And in 2004, ACS jumped into Second Life, which takes social networking not only online, but to its own virtual world.