Hearts vs. Minds: Building Engagement
& Brand Affinity
Campaign Overview
As part of our wider brand engagement strategy, I identified a need to shift beyond performance metrics and factual messaging to establish a deeper emotional connection with our audience. While previous communications highlighted impact through factual details of the membership offer, I saw an opportunity to create stronger resonance by communicating the human stories behind the profession.
The Hearts vs. Minds campaign was developed to address that gap by building brand affinity through emotionally driven storytelling, rooted in the real experiences of UK social workers.
Strategic Insight
Research by Dr. Jennifer Aaker (Stanford GSB) shows that stories are 22x more memorable than facts alone. Emotionally compelling narratives help messages cut through, especially in saturated digital spaces. We positioned this campaign at the intersection of logic (minds) and empathy (hearts); designed to build trust, relevance, and long-term brand connection.
Narrative Strategy
Developed six stories aligned with our brand values of advocacy, integrity, and compassion.
Five of the six videos reflected different career stages and aligned with the BASW membership package and the final video reflected the offer of the professional body (BASW) and the partner union (SWU).
Student | NQSW | Early Career |
Experienced Leader | Self-employed
Content Development
Collaborated with Neck of the Woods Films to produce a series of
short-form videos spotlighting social workers.
Worked with internal stakeholders to develop storyboards.
Tone and Voice
Authentic and
values-led
Reflecting the emotional complexity and real-world challenges of the profession.
Delivery
BASW's market share at the time of the campaign was 20%.
I wanted to reach the other 80,000 social workers across the UK and reinforce the offer with the existing 22,000 members.
To drive membership growth across multiple audience segments, I developed a targeted performance marketing strategy using paid search and social.
Channel Approach
To drive membership growth across multiple audience segments, I developed a targeted performance marketing strategy using paid search and social. The campaign aimed to reach high-intent users actively exploring professional membership options, and to guide them through a seamless, personalised digital journey.
Each membership category, ranging from newly qualified professionals to independent practitioners, was supported by a dedicated WordPress microsite. I chose to run this outside the main site CMS to allow greater flexibility for rapid iteration during the campaign and streamline the conversion funnels. This ensured that users weren’t overwhelmed by unrelated content and allowed us to highlight core value propositions without distraction.
By combining first-party data with targeted keyword bidding and paid social sequencing, we drove qualified traffic into these optimised journeys. The microsite structure also made it easier to run agile A/B tests on creative, messaging, and layout, ultimately improving conversion rates and lead quality across segments.
These microsites acted as optimised landing environments, tailored with audience-specific messaging, benefit breakdowns, and streamlined conversion paths.
This structure allowed us to align campaign targeting with highly relevant content, increasing engagement and conversion likelihood.
Reflections
Whilst this project is still currently underway, I am seeing big impact.
This dual-channel, segmented landing page strategy is improving lead quality and conversion rates, while enabling agile testing and optimization without disrupting the core site infrastructure. The modular nature of the microsites also allow for easy updates and scalability as the campaign evolves. This project is demonstrating how performance marketing, when aligned with structured UX and data-led targeting, can deliver measurable impact across multiple user journeys.