Highlighting our people's response to the crisis
30 Apr 2020
Covid-19 campaign
In response to the rapid escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its near-total domination of the news agenda The University of Manchester launched a campaign, days after lockdown, to highlight the impact of our research, teaching and social responsibility activities in the fight against the new coronavirus.
To date the campaign has gained more than one million impressions through social media, over 30,700 hits on the website from across the globe and our case studies have been mentioned in a Universities UK ‘We Are Together’ report, Russell Group policymaker briefing and on the UKRI Hub online.
This project is a collaboration from across our University, with input from teams within all three Faculties, student recruitment, social responsibility, alumni, and Policy@Manchester. The campaign is being coordinated by the Division of Communications and Marketing.
Key priorities for the campaign include showing how the University is playing a collaborative part in the local, national and global effort, in particular highlighting our links with the NHS, trusts and civic partners, and highlighting the relevance of Manchester solutions to the biggest global challenge the world has faced for decades.
The campaign is focusing on our University values in action across three areas:
1. Highlighting the innovation and pioneering spirit of our researchers in the fight against COVID-19
2. Celebrating the courage and humanity of our staff, students and alumni at the front line of the health and social care response to COVID-19
3. Sharing the knowledge and wisdom of our staff, students and alumni to provide support and advice during this time of global crisis
The COVID-19 campaign site has been recently redeveloped to reflect all three pillars of activity, and are keen to hear of any story ideas you may have. These might include examples of our research response to COVID-19 or examples of our people volunteering to help during the crisis.
Local stories of how are staff are living our values during these difficult times are also being shared by our Internal Communications team on the ‘Our people’ section of StaffNet.
Corporate Campaigns Manager, Vicky Taylor-Plane said: “There’s been a brilliant collaborative team effort behind bringing this campaign to life on a quick turnaround with lots of case study and news content being published and promoted across various channels, including alumni and student comms mailings. We’ve seen impressive levels of engagement with the campaign material on our social media platforms, achieving higher stats for impressions and link clicks than benchmark activity, high levels of media coverage in top tier titles, and, within the first couple of weeks of activity, we’d already generated over 17.5k visits to the campaign microsite, with numbers and content continuing to grow. ”
If you have a story about how our people are responding to COVID-19 please contact Vicky.taylor-plane@manchester.ac.uk. For any stories specific to our volunteering effort, contact anne.arnold@manchester.ac.uk.