An overview of a social media strategy for an award-winning advertising campaign.

1. Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation
of America Case Study
CHALLENGE
Raising awareness and donor engagement
around lesser known digestive diseases
called Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD)
during Awareness Week.
WHAT I DID:
• Social Media Strategy
• PR Activation
• Website Content Strategy

2. Understanding the Audience
INSIGHT:
With 1 in 200 Americans suffering from the pain and
embarrassment from inflammatory bowel diseases, chances
are you know someone with the disease—and you don’t know it.
TARGET:
New donors and the general public who
are unfamiliar with these horrible diseases.
STRATEGY:
• Encourage patients to share their unique
stories using a branded hashtag on social
• Repost patient stories on social
• Share patient stories on vanity URL on website
• Create highly shareable infographics in a way
the public will understand
• Create app showing potential supporters
the different ways they can help patients

3. The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation
of America (CCFA) is the premier
non-profit foundation focused on
finding cures and educating the
massesaboutthesefairlyunknown
chronic conditions.

4. The Solution
STORYTELLING WITH
USER GENERATED CONTENT
CCFA originally rolled out Phase 1
of an advertising campaign, but
received backlash from the patient
community for not telling the full
story of the diseases. So I came
up with a new social media strategy
that reintroduced the campaign
and let the patients share their own
stories with vivid imagery.
We retitled the campaign
“Someone You Know,” as there is a
chance everyone knows someone
with one of these diseases. I was
responsible for the ad placement in
Times Square, strategizing the
campaign video, and running the
campaign across all social media
using the patient stories generated
from the branded hashtag I created.

5. The Result
• 63% increase in
engagement rate year to year
• 84% increase in daily reach on
Facebook year to year
• Helped make CCFA one
of the top nonprofits
with highest user
engagement penetration
on social media that year
• Increased positive brand
sentiment for CCFA