Positioning the health insurance company AOK Bayern as a crisis-proof partner

In March 2020, Elbkind Reply acquired the digital communications budget, including social media and content, of AOK Bayern – the health insurance company. However, the start of this venture went completely differently than expected due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The client responded quickly and started to reorganize all its communications. Elbkind Reply designed a digital education campaign on the subject of the Coronavirus for AOK Bayern. The campaign positions the health insurance company as a reliable source of vital information about COVID-19 for the Bavarian region.

Insuring more than 4.5 million people in Bavaria, AOK Bayern helps shape the healthcare system in the state. To respond to people’s uncertainty caused by the flood of information about Coronavirus, AOK Bayern positioned itself as a serious partner by answering all the important questions. Three experts from the fields of medicine and healthcare were on hand to provide professional advice on how to deal with the virus: Dr. Med. Markus Frühwein, Dr. Irmgard Stippler and Prof. Dr. André Gessner provided facts and answers via the communication channels of AOK Bayern and shared their knowledge in a factual and well-founded way.

Claus Nißl, AOK Bayern: “As a health insurance company, we take responsibility and provide orientation during the Coronavirus crisis by answering the questions of people in Bavaria reliably and empathetically. We were able to react very quickly and implement a comprehensive concept for communicating the issues relevant to the crisis.”

To achieve this, Elbkind Reply designed a multi-level, cross-channel, user-centred distribution and communication concept for all digital channels. The agency conceived a weekly newsletter as well as structure and design for a campaign landing page. The campaign started in March and ran until the end of June. The aim was to address families, students, employees and at-risk groups in the Bavarian region, who could obtain comprehensive and factual information through the services of AOK Bayern and enter into a dialog with the health insurance company via accompanying social media measures.

The campaign ran for a total of 16 weeks, closely interlinked with internal processes. The click rates and reach over the entire campaign period showed that AOK Bayern had chosen the right communication focus for the campaign. In particular, topics such as field reports, articles on established regulations and informative articles on news and recommended behaviour met with a very high response from the target group.