Dexcom is the pioneer and industry leader in continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) for people with diabetes. A CGM is an FDA-approved device that provides continuous insight into glucose levels throughout the day and night. The device displays details about glucose speed and direction, providing users additional information to help with their diabetes management. Put plainly, Dexcom helps save and improve the quality of life for countless people with diabetes.
We call our users and brand ambassadors "Warriors." To be a Dexcom Warrior means you never back down, never quit on what you want to accomplish, and never let anything stand in your way.
For Diabetes Awareness Month, our objective was to elevate our brand's profile and leverage the army of advocates who rely daily on Dexcom's life-saving features through a #WarriorUp challenge, where our storytelling could be brought to life and inspire others living with diabetes to discover their own inner Warrior.
For every photo or video that was posted or shared to Facebook or Instagram and tagged with #WarriorUp, we committed to donating $1, with a campaign goal of raising $100,000 for five diabetes charity partners.
Business goals included growing our Instagram and Facebook presences, sales leads, and collection of user-generated content. From a public relations perspective, we hoped to secure national media attention for the campaign in an effort to increase brand awareness and penetrate an already saturated market during a crowded month to bring attention to diabetes, as six other charitable causes also lay claim to November.
By monitoring our social presence, we knew we had a growing social audience, but we sought to accelerate that growth. Our team looked into many other successful donation-based and awareness-focused campaigns like the Ice Bucket Challenge, Cheerios One Million Acts of Good, Guinness #StacheforCharity, Dawn Saves Wildlife, #ToyotaGiving, and more. Learning from their successes, we adapted some of the elements to appeal to our diabetes audience.
Further, secondary research showed that Facebook and Instagram would be best for reaching our audience. We also learned that word-of-mouth was best for encouraging people to look into a CGM system. With that in mind, we knew our brand ambassadors would succeed.
We were confident we had the ingredients to drive unparalleled engagement with a powerful, inspirational message and an original multimedia content campaign that featured 14 brand videos, hundreds of photos and the curation of a flood of user generated content (UGC). And, to spread the message beyond Dexcom fans, followers and ambassadors, we unleashed a steady and strategic usage of earned and paid media amplification.
We began the campaign by unveiling Call of the Warrior videos our agency, Allison + Partners created for Dexcom ambassadors on social media. We employed our most recognizable and prolific brand ambassadors to help us celebrate the unique, unshakeable Warrior spirit. Actor, superhero, diabetes advocate and Dexcom Warrior Derek Theler kicked things off on November 1st with a simple request to share your solidarity by uploading your best Warrior Call – a scream, a snarl, even a smile – on Facebook or Instagram tagged with #WarriorUp. For every video, photo and subsequent social media share, Dexcom would make a donation to a diabetes charity. The Call of the Warrior was on!
Next, we shared Warrior Calls from MLS star Jordan Morris and country music singer Eric Paslay. #WarriorUp spread across social media, from race car driver Ryan Reed to YouTube sensations the Dale Tribe, from Olympic skier Kris Freeman to television personality Maria Menounos, all of whom posted their own Warrior Calls and challenged others to help them raise awareness. Diabetes patients, their loved ones, and caregivers from around the world answered the Call, sharing their own original #WarriorUp content. In all, more than 28,483 Warrior Calls were created, including amazing videos made by young Warriors, Erin Hall and Maxim Speed responding to Jordan Morris.
Execution included:
The results were inspiring:
The UGC was like nothing we'd ever seen. And, we successfully created a hashtag, #WarriorUp, that became synonymous with not only Dexcom, but also the diabetes community at-large.
On Instagram, our content was engaged with more per post compared to that of our competitors in the month of November. This, combined with Facebook and earned media efforts, led to a significant increase in traffic to our website, helping to drive a 41% increase in new leads over the previous year. Further, because of our challenge, we received more brand ambassador applications than the previous two months combined.
Executing this campaign was truly an integrated effort. One specific example stemmed from Jordan Morris's call to #WarriorUp. Maxim Speed, a young, Hawaiian soccer player with type one diabetes, met the challenge with his own version of our brand ambassador's video. We then reached out to Maxim and asked if he'd be willing to help us promote the campaign and pitched the story to Good Morning Hawaii. On November 28th, Maxim went live to tell everyone about Dexcom and the Call of the Warrior Campaign. Not only was this a great success, but also an excellent example of how the online conversation can result in offline coverage.
