It is a year since Britain went into lockdown as COVID-19 spread across the country. It is a year that has seen ‘unprecedented’ change in our working and living habits, a year of change and challenge as well as rising to the challenge, something the team at John Ayling & Associates prides itself on and oh did they do that 365 days ago.

On the morning of Tuesday 24^th March, the Royal Voluntary Service informed JAA that at 5pm that day the government would announce a campaign to recruit 250,000 NHS volunteers in England and Wales. This volunteer army was needed to help vulnerable and elderly people who were self-isolating. The recruitment drive would be coordinated through an RVS-run call centre relying on potential volunteers completing the online application form on the newly created GoodSamApp website landing page.

The GoodSamApp website was brand new and so it would not appear prominently on search engines when potential volunteers would be searching for it. Due to the urgent turnaround time, no SEO was possible. For this reason, the agency had to use paid search ads on Google & Bing to ensure searchers would be diverted to the application on the correct website. Here, Zach Shah, Head of Search at JAA, recalls the timeline of the day:

11 AM: The RVS client called with an emergency brief. The Health Secretary would announce the need for 250,000 NHS volunteers at the 5pm Downing Street televised briefing. From experience and viewer data, we knew that the ideal time to capture interest would be immediately following the announcement. It was vital that the paid search ads were running at this point to divert traffic to the correct application page, or we would risk losing interest from volunteers. We had six hours. The countdown was on.

12pm: Despite being dispersed around the country and having only been working from home for a week, the JAA team sprang into action. We pride ourselves on being the fastest media agency in the market and we were being tested today!

1pm: To serve PPC ads to potential volunteers we knew we would have to bid on extremely sensitive keywords related to coronavirus and COVID-19. By the letter of Google and Bing’s policies, these keywords were blocked for PPC bidding. The strength of our senior relationships with Google and Bing meant we were able to persuade them, after several hours of intense discussions, to give RVS ‘whitelisting’ to serve ads around COVID-19 keywords. By stressing the unique importance of the campaign, we persuaded the search engines to alter their policies so we could get started. This made JAA one of the first agencies to be able to serve ads on these sensitive keywords.

2pm:  The JAA team brain-stormed ad copy ideas that would still get the message across but without mentioning the NHS in the copy. These were quickly sent for approval.

4:45pm: We began booking PPC ads, fifteen minutes before the government briefing. Google Trends data showed searches for the term ‘NHS volunteer’ skyrocketed immediately. It was essential we were there with ads to direct this army of potential volunteers to the sign-up form. Otherwise, with no organic listings the GoodSam webpage would never have been found.

5:30pm: The uplift in traffic and sign-ups right after the national briefing from Downing Street was so large that we increased the budget and continued to monitor the activity.

6pm: We saw that demand was still incredibly high and so the budget was increased again.

8pm: Our PC ads had reached 180,000 searchers. They were getting to the right website and the army of volunteers were successfully registering.  

By the next day more than 400,000 had signed up to be volunteers. By the end of the week our recruitment campaign had to be halted so the RVS could handle the processing of 750,000 applications.

JAA’s ability to mobilise our team rapidly, to execute a search strategy under intense pressure and to adapt fast to challenging new circumstances, all within barely half a working day, were the keys to an amazingly effective campaign. I look back on that day now, a year on, and feel incredibly proud of what we were able to achieve.

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