The Royal College of Psychiatrists wanted more recruits to join the profession, and wanted to challenge misconceptions about the profession.
This is a brief that many C-suite professionals in membership associations will be familiar with!
In this case, the college had great success over the previous 3 years with their Choose Psychiatry campaign. It had previously won a MEMCOM AWARD for the best integrated campaign, and is well renowned for being a strong annual campaign.
The Choose Psychiatry campaigns have always featured impactful moving image content at their heart, telling emotive and authentic stories from the profession, with a simple and memorable call to action: Choose Psychiatry!
So there was a great legacy to build on – and of course the college wanted to make the 4th year the best yet!
After surveying some 750 students, the college identified that ‘making a difference to patients’ was the key driver for medical students to choose psychiatry.
So the title for year 4 of the campaign was ‘Choose to make a difference’ and we called our concept ‘Career Projections’.
Building on the proven components of emotive and authentic stories, we filmed three real Psychiatrists reflecting on their careers whilst their careers were projected onto huge screens before them.
Projectors are instantly emotive, but also highly visual so are a perfect device! Further emotional engagement was planned for in the way we phrased and structured the stories that were told, and our use of music.
To further aid engagement and connection with the contributors, we asked our psychiatrists to look straight to camera. This is powerful as eye contact increases trust, authenticity and like-ability. But it is also difficult for non-professional presenters to look at camera and talk in a relaxed way. So we used a specialist bit of kit; a see-through mirror over the camera lens, meaning that the contributor was looking direct to the camera, but they could see the director in the reflection, so that for the contributor if just felt like conversing with a person.
I absolutely love this. Liquona’s suggestions were excellent and I completely support them. They have been so responsive and listened carefully to feedback all the way through. The film packs an emotional punch and I felt very moved watching it.
Thanks for all you amazing hard work with this – I see collaboration, innovation, respect, courage, learning and excellence in bucket loads.
Kate Lovett, Dean of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
To have a successful campaign you need to THINK CAMPAIGN.
This means using the central assets to create multiple assets for a multichannel approach.
Social media shorts were used across Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
A high profile media story was put out at the same time; the need for more psychiatrists as there is only one psychiatrist per 12,526 patients! This allowed the college to put spokespersons up for interview on Sky, LBC and Times Radio amongst others, and was featured in the mainstream press.
The college also undertook webinars which had over 1000 attendees.
The campaign as a whole, year on year has now seen application rates to the profession increase by 28%.
The film is excellent – so professional and slick.
The messaging is very powerful, and it makes absolute sense to take Choose Psychiatry in this direction.
It paints psychiatry in a very positive light and makes clear the often close link between the doctor and the patient in psychiatry. Absolutely fantastic!
Paul Rees MBE, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
