LifeWise rebrands itself as a health support partner for its members

Weber Shandwick and its client, LifeWise Health Plan of Washington, are the co-winners of the Best Use of Social Media for Brand Awareness category in PR Daily’s 2013 Social Media Awards.

In late 2012, Weber Shandwick was asked to reposition and redefine LifeWise’s brand as more than just a health insurance provider before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

After an ingeniously researched analysis of its highly competitive market, Weber Shandwick found their angle: Reposition LifeWise as a health support partner and an inspiration for healthy living.

To accomplish this, a new hyperlocal online lifestyle magazine, “Actively Northwest” (ANW), was created that would appeal to the majority of LifeWise’s audiences. ANW cultivated a personable, encouraging, health-focused voice and deep, yet digestible, trusted healthy-living content that focused on self-improvement.

As soon as Weber Shandwick decided on editorial content, it formed a social media plan to deliver content from ANW through its social media channels. The plan included:

• A Facebook page launch linking to ActivelyNorthwest.com with paid social, hyperlocalized posts
• An owned photo library for ANW consisting of only original photography (no stock photos)
• The LifeWise Kitchen, a digital cooking show on ANW with six-second recipe videos
• 14 inspirational food and fitness Vine videos on the site
• #FitMob, six free fitness events promoted on Facebook, ANW, and Twitter

Weber Shandwick also wrote a “social media playbook” for LifeWise. The playbook outlined strategy and execution for ANW’s Facebook page engagement, while its educational section explained the terms, processes, and benefits of social media to LifeWise’s staff.

Weber Shandwick’s unobtrusive content marketing style for ANW attracted huge numbers of LifeWise members and the public:

• More than 246,000 unique visitors to ActivelyNorthwest.com in the first three months, including 30,000+ views for the top three posts
• 37,000 fans of ANW’s Facebook page in the first 90 days
• 20,000 likes, 800 comments, 3,000 shares, and 33,000 bit.ly clicks in the first quarter of its existence
• A returning visitor rate that averaged 17.8 percent (20.8 percent for September)

Congratulations to the Weber Shandwick team of Justin Tsang and Jori Saeger for their work on this outstanding piece of market research, content marketing, and branding!

Check out ActivelyNorthwest.com here.

Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here.