As originally posted by PRWeek
Veterinarians struggle with psychological distress and suicidal thoughts.
Campaign: ASK (assess, support, know)
Company: Banfield Pet Hospital
Agency partners: Coyne PR
Duration: September 2019 to January 2020
One-in-six veterinarians considers suicide, and one-in-10 suffers from severe psychological distress. In response to the field’s mental health crisis, Banfield Pet Hospital closed its more than 1,000 locations for two hour blocks throughout January to facilitate interactive mental health training.
Strategy
Banfield Pet Hospital’s goal was to illuminate the size of the problem as well as draw attention to its mental health and wellness training for veterinarians. It created a course with the specific purpose of helping Banfield’s more than 3,600 veterinarians recognize symptoms of psychological distress and suicidal ideation, both within themselves and coworkers.
“This is a profession that people go into because they have a calling: they love animals,” said Jennifer DeNick, a Coyne PR SVP who heads the agency’s pet and animal team. “To have a big part of their jobs be putting animals down, to deal with animals who are greatly sick, it’s absolutely heartbreaking.”
On top of that, many veterinarians are saddled with a significant amount of student debt. In general, these are largely invisible issues to the general public.
“For most of us, when we think about a veterinarian, we think, ‘Oh, they get to help cats and dogs all day,’” DeNick said.
Tactics
The campaign unfurled in two phases. The first was Banfield’s announcement that it was developing an ASK (assess, support, know) mental health training program for its employees. Time magazine was given an exclusive and covered the initiative in September 2019.
The second phase of the campaign took place on January 6, 2020, a date chosen in observance of the one-in-six statistic. For two hours that day, Banfield closed all hospitals nationwide in order to facilitate interactive training for its veterinarians and hospital associates. It also made the training available as a free resource for veterinarians outside its network.
Banfield partnered with six dog influencers, including Kelly Bove, Ralph the Corgi and Albert on Wheels, to get the word out and raise awareness.
The influencers posted about the initiative in the morning of January 6 “and then we asked them to go dark for the rest of the day,” DeNick said.
The comments included a wide range of responses, everything from, “‘I’ve never thought about this, thanks for bringing it to light,’” to, “personal stories…it was shocking for me to look through the comments and see how many people had them.”
Results
The campaign generated 122 earned media placements in addition to Time, including articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, People, and the Drudge Report.
On social media, the influencer campaign generated a total of 41,854 engagements, including thousands of comments.
“We knew this was a win when the client told us that she was out at dinner, and the table behind her was talking about the Time article,” DeNick said. “It’s not often you hear strangers talking about an article you helped develop and put out there. When we heard that we were like, ‘Wow, this is big.’”
