Role: Creative Director | Social engagement campaign | Concept and development
The call of the warrior.
Imagine having to stab you finger till it bleeds six to ten times a day. Then having to carefully measure your blood sugar levels and keep track of every change. And when the levels cross a certain threshold, having to break out the syringe (that you had to keep handy at all times) and inject yourself with insulin. Every day. For the rest of your life. And imagine that your life depended on it.
Now, imagine what affect this would have on your psyche. How would it hinder your ability to live a full, active and “normal” life? That is the “normal” that more than 30 million people in America affected by Diabetes deal with every day. Let’s just say living with Diabetes takes a level of courage that most of us cannot comprehend. It takes strength and support. It takes an unshakable spirit. It takes a warrior.
Our Purpose:
Live more. Prick less.
We’re more than a device manufacturer that saves your fingers from the dreaded finger prick. We’re a band of people working together with a singular purpose — to empower people affected by Diabetes to live their lives to the fullest.
Our Enemy:
Fear.
Our enemy isn’t Diabetes. It’s Despair. It’s the lingering fear that’s fed by feelings of isolation, endless uncertainty and hopelessness. The reality is that this disease still has no cure. But technology is opening up possibilities that didn’t exist before — possibilities that chip away at the fear and empower us to live fuller lives.
Our plan:
Call in the warriors.
We set out to change the narrative. To turn a demoralizing disease with a life sentence into a spirited crusade to live our lives on our own terms. This campaign needed to rally the diabetes community under one flag, with a sense of pride and purpose, and with a singular message: To stop letting this disease hold us back and start taking back our lives.
Call to action:
#WarriorUp
Warrior Up is an attitude. It’s the way of the Diabetes Warrior. It’s how we approach life, take on diabetes and live life to the fullest every day. We celebrated that unshakable Warrior spirit by asking the Diabetes community to come together in a show of force and give us their best warrior call in recognition of Diabetes Awareness Month.
This simple act of solidarity was our way of saying we’re officially putting diabetes on notice. We called on all our Warriors to stand up and let the world know that we’re not taking this disease lying down. We refuse to let diabetes prevent us from living life to the fullest.
Activation:
Bring in the big guns.
The message was straight forward and the request was easy enough; show your solidarity by uploading a photo or video of your best Warrior Call on Facebook or Instagram using the #WarriorUp hashtag, and we’ll donate one dollar to a diabetes charity for every post.
To kick things off we leveraged our very dedicated corps of celebrity influencers by producing a series of campaign videos reaching out to other influential social media personalities along with the rest of the diabetic community during Diabetes Awareness Month.
Social Campaign: Celebrity Influencers
Social Campaign: Warrior Calls
How it worked:
The Warrior Call.
With our celebrity influencers leading the charge, the #WarriorUp challenge was then handed off to the diabetic community at large to post their own Warrior Call and help spread some awareness with an attitude.
What’s a Warrior Call? It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s how you face a challenge. It’s a call on courage. A scream at the top of your lungs. An outburst. A snarl. Mostly it’s an attitude — sometimes you can yell using just your eyes. Whatever you call it, you’re telling diabetes you’re not backing down. There’s only one rule: don’t hold back.
Response:
And they showed up.
We needed a battle cry loud enough to be heard beyond our social media bubble. And our passionate community of Diabetes Warriors did not disappoint. Diabetes patients, their loved ones, and caregivers from around the world answered the call, sharing their own original #WarriorUp content. In all, more than 28,483 Warrior Calls were created and shared, with a total of 6,244,613 organic/paid social media impressions and 42 media placements. By the end of the campaign, 5,563 new social media followers had picked up the banner and charged forward.
Their voices could not be ignored. Because when that many people come together and start talking about what’s possible, the impossible tends to happen. Whether it’s finding the cure, or just finding the courage to make it through another day, with 28,483 warriors standing by your side, we find the courage to fight back.
$100,000 was raised for Diabetes charities.