ISSUE
The American Nurses Enterprise includes the American Nurses Association, the premier organization representing the interests of the nation’s 4 million registered nurses, and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), which promotes excellence in nursing and health care globally through programs such as the Magnet® and Pathway to Excellence® Conference.
Every year ANCC hosts their Magnet & Pathway Conference, which is a celebration of all things nursing. The 2022 conference came to Philadelphia during a nursing crisis. The impacts of COVID-19 led many nurses to leave the field, and others experienced negative mental health impacts like stress, anxiety, and depression.
ANCC engaged Ceisler Media & Issue Advocacy for the 2022 conference in Philadelphia to leverage our knowledge of the city’s media landscape. Our partnership included media outreach, rapid response crisis communications and public relations support.
After a successful partnership in 2022 resulting in onsite media interviews, coverage of the celebration parade, — which reached more than 80,000 local viewers — and feature stories in several media sectors, the entities re-engaged Ceisler Media for their 2023 conference in Chicago and the 2024 conference in New Orleans. We dove deeper into the client’s issues and started planning earlier for each unique conference setting. This culminated in successful work in both Chicago and New Orleans, proving our strategic approach can be successful anywhere, not just in our home state of Pennsylvania.
CHICAGO 2023
The Ceisler Media team saw an opportunity to make the 2023 conference in Chicago the greatest celebration of nurses yet, and to put them at the forefront of all content. We quickly coordinated with conference partner hospitals to solicit positive stories about nurses and the work hospitals were doing to support them.
Our media relations efforts secured top-tier, quality mentions from outlets such as Good Day Chicago, the Associated Press, Yahoo! News, Crain’s Chicago Business, The Jennifer Hudson Show and LinkedIn News. This helped drive media attention and engagement of ANCC content, which skyrocketed during the conference, resulting in a 43% increase in mentions.
Our team also worked as an extension of ANCC to gather digitally focused content to share in real time. We interviewed nurses at the conference and captured their stories for use in Instagram Reels, on X, and other online channels. This work helped the organization’s social media presence achieve 215,000 impressions on X and 24,000 impressions on Instagram. The conference hashtag trended on X during two days of the conference — a first in the organization’s history.
NEW ORLEANS 2024
New Orleans was the smallest media market of the three conference locations, so we pivoted our approach to expand the volume and quality of news as well as organic social coverage. We worked to maximize in-person engagement and increase local community engagement. Our team planned a celebratory press event to kick off the conference and highlight the value of Magnet-Pathway recognition featuring partner health systems and the New Orleans Saints Cheer Krewe. We also kept our pulse on potential crisis moments involving a nearby nursing strike and Healthcare Workers for Palestine press activities.
Ceisler Media’s efforts led to a successful, energetic press event that served as the public kick-off of the conference with several key partners, members of the Cheer Krewe, and Sir Saint, the mascot from the New Orleans Saints. We recorded the press event and posted it to ANA YouTube Channel and shared the recording with the media who could not attend, resulting in comprehensive coverage and partnerships:
Through Instagram Reels and TikToks, we were able to show audiences that nursing isn’t just about what takes place in an exam room, but that it is also a noble endeavor that saves lives thanks to the hardworking efforts of our nurses.
Over three years, we executed a wide range of strategic communications strategies and activities that were built upon the previous year’s efforts at the Magnet & Pathway conference. Our goal was to help enhance the reach and relevancy of the conference and to showcase the nursing profession. We increased the cadence of communications, featured key highlights and mined different story angles to keep our approach fresh and exciting to attract coverage in addition to increasing both community and social media engagement.