MCV Foundation – Improving Awareness through Marketing
MCV Foundation’s 3 year partnership with NDP
Three years ago, after recently completing a rebrand, MCV Foundation invited NDP to become their strategic media partner. The MCV Foundation supports the healing, discovery and teaching mission of VCU Health by inspiring philanthropy, collaborating in fundraising efforts and through the wise stewardship of gifts.
Alex Henley, Director of Marketing Communications for MCV Foundation explains their mission to “foster meaningful, long-term relationships with our donors and inspire them to contribute by sharing stories about the world-class patient care, leading edge research and extraordinary education that happens on our campus at VCU Health every day.” Alex and her team create content and communications to share the amazing stories and videos that capture hearts and imaginations.
Throughout our three-year engagement, the NDP team executed a multi-channel media plan, which included expanding MCV Foundation’s digital footprint to increase awareness among their target audiences—current and prospective donors.
The first-year digital campaigns employed standard IAB banner ads placed through programmatic partners.
In the second-year digital campaign, we expanded beyond programmatic to include digital audio, giving voice to the MCV Foundation story. We also tested high-impact digital ad units that targeted consumers who are inclined to make charitable donations and those interested in medical technology and research advancements.
Year three allowed the strongest opportunity to propel the unique MCV Foundation brand through additional high-impact digital campaigns.
At this time, we are awaiting results of research to measure lift in awareness—but we are confident that the findings will be positive. We’ve seen strong increases in digital activity including improved CTRs and interaction rates year over year. Some of the strongest results to date include high-impact CTRs which are 20% over our digital media partner’s benchmark.
While NDP is a full-service agency, our engagement with MCV Foundation is an excellent example of the agency’s flexibility and willingness to dovetail our services with in-house capabilities and/or outside partners.
“It has been such a pleasure to work with Susan Dubuque and the entire team at NDP. Susan is a tremendous strategist and, most importantly, a wonderful human being. I’ve turned to her many times for a quick piece of advice, and she has always made herself available and willing to help,” said Alex. “I know we’re certainly not their largest account, but you would never know it. I feel like we get top treatment and attention from everyone there. Susan and the team at NDP have been critical in our go-to-market strategy. After going through a research study and brand refresh three years ago, we turned to NDP to help us with our advertising and media buying strategy.”
“The media buying team at NDP is second to none. As a nonprofit, we have a modest budget and they stretched it to produce incredible results. Her media team includes a deep bench of people with knowledge and contacts in both traditional and new media channels. We were honored to win six PRSA awards this year, including Best in Show, and Susan and the team at NDP are a big part of our success. I can’t thank them enough for all of their help and support,” Alex said.