SPEAK, CHALLENGE, DONATE

6 min readSep 18, 2020

#3FOR3 BURPEE CHALLENGE

Pick a brand’s social media campaign that caught attention. Define its perceived goals and list out any parts of the strategy that stood out to you in achieving or not achieving those goals. Align KPIs that best fit tracking the goals identified.

One of my favorite organizations is Hilinski Hope (H3H). Hilinski Hope was created by the Hilinski family in honor of their son Tyler who passed in early 2018. The foundation was created to connect students with mental health resources, assisting universities to institutionalize best practices and to generate funding necessary to support programs that will help destigmatize mental illness. H3H promotes awareness and education of mental health and wellness for student-athletes. Its mission is to educate, advocate, and remove the stigma associated with mental illness while raising funds for programs that provide student-athletes with the tools and resources that support their mental health and wellness (https://hilinskishope.org).

The social media campaign, 3for3 Burpee Challenge, was designed to use engagement on social media to raise awareness for mental health and increase donations to the Hilinski Hope foundation.

3for3 Burpee Challenge used the message “Get Up For Those Who Are Down” as the voice behind this campaign (Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics). They strategized by providing specific information on how everyone could contribute to the cause and who will benefit from success ((https://hilinskishope.org/3for3-challenge/).

SPEAK your support; CHALLENGE your friends; DONATE to the cause
One person completes the challenge by doing 3 Burpees and then nominates 3 friends to pass it forward

(Ch.3 Social Media Strategy: Getting Started)

— Can’t do a Burpee but want to participate- YOU STILL CAN!

Tell us why taking care of your mental health is important to you or how you keep your mental health a priority
AND Donate to the Hilinski Hope Foundation by texting H3HOPE to 44321

The strongest part of this campaign falls under the messaging and the call to action. While the “Get Up For Those Who Are Down” message brings an emotional connection to the brand (Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics), the heart lies within the Burpees. Doing a Burpee is tough and usually only completed by those who are physically fit. That doesn’t stop the campaign from understanding that normal people have limits and may not be able to do a burpee. Instead of letting them give up on the challenge, they challenge them in a new way by using their voice to speak up for mental wellness. This is a great way to continue to push the message across all networks for everyone to participate in the challenge (https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com).

Challenging each other was another great way to achieve the goals of raising awareness and funds. While some people challenged their friends to get involved, others challenged professional athletes, authors, broadcasters, local establishments, and personal heroes. This was a great way to develop influencers for the challenge. While this is a great cause, the average person can only reach so many people through social media. By incorporating those with larger followings the campaign was able to reach thousands of their followers who in turn joined the challenge and increased the footprint of awareness. This prompted the media to get involved, earning free publicity for the campaign, and involving those who are not on social media. This informed the masses of the purpose of the challenge and how to participate and donate (https://blog.hootsuite.com/smart-social-media-goals/).

Here are some of the milestones for the 3for3 Burpee Challenge month-long campaign:

The program began on March 3, 2019

- March 9, 2019

$4,000 + had been raised
1,084,700 Impressions
559,000 reached on social media

- March 31, 2019

$9,000 + had been raised
1,700,000 Impressions

670,000 reached on social media

While the campaign had great success there were some parts of the strategy where the goal was not achieved. There is a great assumption that lots of awareness for mental health was brought to the social media platforms but we cannot measure how much was retained (Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics). The concern is that this could end up like the ALS — Ice Bucket Challenge where individuals do it for fun and to challenge their friends but they do not understand the meaning and impact behind the challenge. The other instance is how many of the participants donated towards the cause? As demonstrated above there was lots of engagement on social media but it begins to dwindle as the month went on. They could have posted more content or partnered with more people to continue to push awareness and expand the digital footprint of the message(https://blog.hootsuite.com/smart-social-media-goals/).

KPIs — Key Performance Indicators

The best KPIs to track the 3for3 Burpee Challenge campaign goals of raising awareness and funds for mental health are impressions, the number of followers, engagement, and lead conversion rate (https://marketing.sfgate.com).

One of the main goals for H3H was to raise awareness for mental health illness and that can be measured through impressions which track how often the content is seen on social media, the number of followers which measures over time the likes, follows and subscribes, and of course, the engagement which bridges the gap through mentions, replies, likes, shares, and clicks (https://marketing.sfgate.com). These KPIs fall under the top funnel of attracting new consumers and bringing awareness to the cause. The challenge brings in the Middle funnel, engaging the new audience to take part in the challenge, tell your story, and share with friends so they may be able to do the same (https://www.linkedin.com/goals-kpis).

KPI 1: Average engagement of challenge based on the number of social media accounts reached.
KPI 2: % post reach — how many accounts did the challenge reach as compared to the number followers the 3for3 Burpee Challange account has.(https://www.linkedin.com/goals-kpis)

While the main KPIs fell under brand awareness we cannot ignore the call to action. Although asking for donations was not highlighted as much as bringing the awareness it was still a part of the campaign. This is where Lead Conversion Rate comes into play. Although, we are not increasing revenue we are increasing donations. The conversion rate is closing the deal or encouraging participants to take the desired action like donating to the Hilinski Hope foundation (https://marketing.sfgate.com).

KPI 3: % of participants who donated to the Hilinski Hope Foundation after learning about mental health and wellness.
(https://www.linkedin.com/goals-kpis)

Overall, the campaign was a great success. They were able to reach hundreds of thousands who either participated in the challenge, used their voice, shared the actions, or donated to the foundation. While it was a success there is always room for improvement to reach even higher goals and evaluate the success through the best KPIs.