The Campaign

Although there is an international acronym “F.A.S.T.” to memorize stroke symptoms, it’s hard for Taiwanese to recall the symptoms immediately, mainly because English is not the mother language in Taiwan, making it challenging to promote locally. Chinese poems and idioms are our unique cultural heritage, and we have to memorize them in our childhood for lasting this tradition. So, we got inspired to leverage our culture to remember stroke symptoms more easily. We put stroke symptoms into a well-known idiom “Lin Wei Bu Luan” and extended this idiom into poetry, to help people learn it by heart. *Lin, means you can’t lift one of your hands or feet; it drifts downward. *Wei, means the face has fallen to one side when you smile or do any facial expression. *Bu, means you slurs while talking. *Luan, means don’t panic! Call 911 immediately and reach the hospital within the three-hour window.

Creative Execution

Implementation: Campaign ambassador: To make the slogan more memorable and influential, we invited William Shen, a popular comedian to serve as campaign ambassador. A fun educational video: An educational video featuring William Shen made the slogan more easily remembered. Visualizing the slogan : We transformed the slogan into images for the media to feature in reports, and for the public to share. Timeline: 2017/10/22-2018/12/31 Placement: A press event was organized to introduce the campaign slogan. And, we held an activity to conduct one-on-one health promotion program. When a cold snap hit, we sent the educational materials to journalists, and it led to earned media coverage. Taiwan has a high density of convenience stores and taxi groups. Therefore, the campaign implemented in-store and taxi video advertising to display the video to increase the visibility.

Target Audience Outcomes: After the 6-month campaign, the number of patients who reached the hospital within the three-hour window and got treated has increased by 40 percent. Media Outputs: -Earned media: Doctors, celebrities, and TV programs took the initiative to share the slogan, making the slogan and the acrostic poem more widely known to the general public. -The campaign successfully attracted media coverage, producing more than 210 pieces of media reports, creating strong PR value of USD 600,000 approximately. -With the online and offline promotion, the slogan, acrostic poem, and the educational video have reached more than 18,000,000 people (more than 2/3 of the Taiwanese population). Government endorsement earned! Health Promotion Administration, the top governmental agency in promoting health, will start introducing the new slogan in 2018, enhancing public awareness about timely stroke recognition.

The work aimed at raising awareness of stroke symptoms to get to the hospital timely (in 3 hours). We tapped into a culturally familiar format – Chinese idioms and poetry – to create a catchy and easily understood slogan, and promoted it through multiple channels. It successfully earned the endorsement from medical societies and doctors, and the government authorities also use it as educational materials, to further enhance public awareness. After the campaign, the number of patients who reached the hospital within the three-hour window and got treated has increased by 40%, which is a significant behavior change.

Target audience: Although the old is easier to have strokes, the 911 calls are usually made by the young. As a result, the general public is our target audience. Target Media: The media with high reach to the general public were targeted, e.g. online news media, social media, TV, and key newspaper. PR planning: Depending on Chinese special cultural heritage, we create “Lin Wei Bu Luan” poetry. And, we develop impressive and easily distributed educational content to raise awareness. Approach: To make the slogan memorable and influential, we invited William Shen, a popular comedian in Taiwan to serve as campaign ambassador. Also, We made a fun video featuring William Shen to make the slogan easily remembered. The video is distributed in convenient stores, outdoor TV wall, taxi, FaceBook, Youtube, and outdoor activity.