Challenges

There are 3.3 million caregivers in Ontario; ordinary people who provide physical and/or emotional support to a family member, partner, friend or neighbour. The Ontario Caregiver Organization (OCO) exists to provide information and support for caregivers who provide almost 75% of all patient care in Ontario’s healthcare system.

Caregivers need help. Caregiver burnout is on the rise with 1 in 4 caregivers experiencing anger, anxiety and depression. Many don’t know where to turn for help.

OCO’s priority objective was to launch a free helpline and new website to support caregivers and provide them with a single point of access to information.

Insights

Following consultation with the client and a focus group with caregivers of all ages, our team at Intent uncovered one of our largest challenges—many caregivers don’t consider themselves to be caregivers because they are “helping” a loved one. In truth, they are playing a vital role in the healthcare system, and as such, need to be supported.

Another large challenge we uncovered was that caregivers feel overwhelmed and have limited options for help. This meant that our campaign needed to do two things—ensure caregivers realize they are caregivers, and inform them there are options for help.

Solutions

Intent developed several creative solutions to reflect all our audiences to overcome this challenge. The approach selected for full execution was “You’re there for your Mother/Brother/Partner/Neighbor/etc., We’re here for you.” This modular approach allowed us to be fully representative of all demographics in our various executions and to tailor to specific audiences depending on the channel.

The campaign has been an overwhelming success, and we’ve managed to achieve the following results:

• Over 35 million impressions across all channels
• 1.4 million print ads in circulation
• Over 8 million TV impressions of our broadcast public service announcement
• 13.5 million impressions of our radio ads
• 3.5 million impressions online, with a click through rate that is triple industry average
• A very high 7% engagement rate across social channels
• Over 5,000 engagements across all social channels
• Over 500 interactions with our helpline (phone and live chat)
• More than 600 calls to the helpline over the campaign period
• Recipient of the Gold Quill Award of Merit at the International IABC awards