ASHA’s Identify the Signs Campaign is Reaching Millions of Consumers – How You Can Get Involved

Interview with Joe Cerquone, Director of Public Relations, ASHA

Carolyn Smaka:  Joe, thanks for your time today.  Congratulations on a very successful and engaging public education campaign – Identify the Signs.  Can you provide an overview of the campaign?

Joe Cerquone:  Thank you for having me. The Identify the Signs campaign is a multi-media, bilingual, national campaign.  It uses a number of different tactics to put across a pretty simple, straightforward message that early identification is a stepping stone to early intervention, which is very important in the treatment of communication disorders. In fact, across health care early intervention produces dividends for everyone.  It facilitates treatment and thus benefits not only patients but also their loved ones.  By improving lives and helping individuals reach their full potential, and well as helping to reduce health care costs, early intervention also benefits society as a whole.

Carolyn:  With universal newborn hearing screening and early intervention, why is there a need for a campaign like this?  Aren’t we doing okay in terms of early identification? 

Joe: Great strides have been made with respect to newborn hearing screening, but we still need to be vigilant identifying hearing loss in children who were not screened, those who are lost to follow up, as well as children who pass the newborn hearing screening, but acquire hearing loss later. As you know, passing a newborn infant hearing screening does not mean monitoring children’s hearing health is needless.  In addition, this campaign targets a wide range of communication disorders, including speech and language issues.

The Identify the Signs campaign provides a very accessible form of education for the public about, first of all, what the warning signs are of a variety of communication disorders, and secondly, if someone  thinks they see those signs, where they can go for help and resource information.

Carolyn: Can you talk about that multi-media aspect?  What components are actually involved in the campaign?

Joe: To date, the campaign has reached an audience of more than 225 million through a variety of tactics. They include broadcast public service  announcements in English and Spanish that were first distributed to television and radio stations nationwide when the campaign launched last September. As of late winter, the PSAs had aired approximately 24,000 times.  We anticipate they will continue to air through August of this year. The major media markets where they have appeared on TV are New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland. Meanwhile, the radio spots have aired in New York, L.A., Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Boston. They have run in many other markets as well.
 

 

We have also done a number of media interviews.  When we launched the campaign last fall, we did a satellite media tour featuring ASHA’s 2013 President Dr. Patricia Prelock. There were 21 different airings of interviews she did with television and radio stations around the country. Overall, the tour reached an audience of 11.2 million people. The major markets were Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis/St/ Paul as well as many smaller markets.  Since then, we placed more than 10 ASHA members in in studio interviews settings at local broadcast media stations around the country, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Minneapolis.  Also, we did a Hispanic satellite broadcast media tour from ASHA’s 2013 Convention in Chicago that reached an audience of 1.7 million.  A bilingual ASHA member from Texas served as the interviewee, and there were 12 airings of interviews with her on Hispanic media around the country. 

The press release we disseminated about the launch of the campaign was posted on 107 media sites.  In addition, we had print story placements in USA Today and Parent Guide News. In terms of social media, the campaign has been featured in several blog postings, including in the Washington Post, on Parents.com, Babyzone, and Philly.com. 

Another component of the campaign is banner ads, which have so far reached an audience digitally of 10.9 million. 

You will also find podcasts on IdentifytheSigns.org. In one, Dr. Prelock provides an overview of the campaign. There are also two others, one featuring an audiologist and another, a speech-language pathologist (SLP).  Combined, those podcasts have been downloaded more than 2,000 times and they have had hundreds of shares on social media. 

On ASHA’s Facebook page, which has more than 60,000 likes, the posts about the campaign were the most popular posts on that page in the last two years. We also conducted a Facebook ad campaign over the course of about 3 weeks, which reached an audience of close to 800,000.

Another campaign tactic we’ve used is exhibiting at tradeshows. We exhibited at the AARP convention and at the Consumer Electronics show. In both cases, local audiologists staffed our booths. The campaign attracted a lot of attention at both shows, and many people we spoke with seemed very interested in seeking professional help.

Carolyn:  These are great results.  What do you attribute to the success of the campaign thus far?

Joe: I think this campaign is special for several reasons. The campaign started with ASHA members.  About a year ago, we polled ASHA members about what they hear from the public and people they see daily in their practices. We had a 16% response rate – about 1,200 members took the poll, both SLPs and audiologists.

Nearly half reported lack of awareness was a leading barrier to early detection of communication disorders. Once we learned that, we felt we had the basis for a public education campaign, one that stemmed directly from ASHA member feedback.   

In addition, the Identify the Signs campaign is relevant for all ASHA members – both SLPs and audiologists. It covers a variety of communication disorders.  ASHA members are terrific spokespeople for the media. Audiologists and SLPs are knowledgeable, passionate about what they do, and very authentic, all important qualities to put across in broadcast media. When you do broadcast interviews, you hear back from producers afterwards. With this campaign, we have consistently heard very positive feedback from stations and we are getting invited to come back with future undertakings.  Given today’s extremely competitive media market, leaving that kind of impression with producers is so important for it’s a way of planting seeds for future coverage.

Though we are very happy with the success of the Identify the Signs campaign thus far, we are not satisfied. We can’t afford to be, for that is a sure way to compromise your ability to adapt and be effective in a fast-changing media environment.   What is big news one day can quickly disappear the next. Getting the public to hear and see your message takes repeated, steady, outreach because so much information is competing for the public’s attention. It is said that we are living in the “Age of Distraction,” given the many new information channels that exist, as well as the many new technological tools for accessing them.  It helps to have a large team devoted to putting a national message across and this is why member engagement with the Identify the Signs campaign is important.  Members have already gotten involved and seen very positive results. We hope they will continue to engage in even larger numbers.

Carolyn: How can ASHA members get involved?

Joe:  There are many ways.  We are developing a pool of members who are willing to serve as media sources, and we have compiled a roster of 800 that have responded in the wake of the campaign. To join the pool, all one needs to do is send a brief email expressing their interest to pr@asha.org. We note their interest and contact them should an appropriate media opportunity present itself.

At the same time, members don’t have to wait on us to serve as a local media source about the Identify the Signs campaign. They can apply it in their communities using the member toolkit on the Identify the Signs website.  The toolkit is simple, straightforward, and very effective. It includes templates for things like press releases that can be easily applied locally. There is also a sample blog post, print advertisements and other templates.  Members who have websites can link to the campaign and use the infographics. 

We advise our members to use national news—for example, research or a study relevant to the work of the professions—as an opportunity to promote themselves and their professions in their communities. For example, recently a study was in the news linking hearing loss to depression, particularly in women.  This was a good opportunity for members to contact their local news stations for an interview or quote, post information on their websites and social media, and otherwise leverage the tools in the Identify the Signs campaign to promote themselves and the services they provide.

Members who have questions or would like advice are welcome to email pr@ASHA.org.  We will follow up and are always happy to help.

Carolyn: I look forward to seeing more of the momentum – it is a very well done and engaging campaign and it is clearly producing results.  Thanks for taking the time to discuss some of the details with me!