How we did it

We turned statements in the initial brief about apprenticeships (‘Earn while you learn’, ‘Job variety’ etc) into questions, providing us with our campaign branding: #NHyeS.

The campaign used a mix of news generation and case study development, overlaid with a social campaign to support awareness and drive traffic to www.stepintothenhs.nhs.uk.

For our social media stunt during National Apprenticeship Week we developed a geotargeted Snapchat filter which displayed one of five available apprenticeship roles. These filters were promoted to Snapchat users at job centres at ten cities in England, as well as at a large apprenticeship event in Birmingham.

This highly targeted campaign (people in job centres are almost exclusively there to look for work) was the first time NHS Health Education England had used Snapchat as a marketing tool.

The results

Media coverage topped 30 pieces including nationals, regionals and broadcast and Facebook content reached two-thirds of a million. This resulted in Stepintothenhs web traffic increases of 122% and users up 94% . During National Apprenticeship Week, page views on www.jobs.nhs.uk were up 75% versus the previous week.

CIPR judges said: “Impressive influencer outreach and some great creative angles that provided stand-out in a noisy topic area. Impressive coverage across national and regional print and broadcast media and a fun approach to social with impressive results.”