Elevating Limeade as a Trusted Source on Employee Care During Coronavirus Outbreak

The Challenge

With the goal of increasing Limeade’s brand awareness through top-tier media coverage in outlets like Forbes and Business Insider, Walker Sands proposed a data study related to Limeade’s existing core messaging around employee care. To further position Limeade as an expert in its field and provide useful data for reporters, the two companies partnered together to produce the 2020 Employee Care Report. The report included key findings based on a survey of 1,000 full-time U.S. workers on topics like lack of care, burnout and mental health at work.

With the report complete, Walker Sands was prepared to execute a comprehensive media outreach strategy to select top-tier business, tech and HR publications. But right as the report was scheduled to launch, coronavirus caused considerable shifts in the media landscape, leaving little room for news unrelated to the pandemic.

As working environments changed due to coronavirus, employee mental health and well-being became a top concern for companies, and Limeade was doing everything they could to help employees and organizations navigate this crisis. For example, in an effort to support the emotional and physical well-being of Washingtonians during the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s Health Care Authority teamed up with Limeade to expand free access to its online wellness tools to more than 200,000 Apple Health (Medicaid) clients through 2020.

From an outreach perspective, Walker Sands and Limeade knew that the company had valuable data and thought leadership insights (beyond just findings from the report) to share related to employee care in the current climate. This information could aid reporters in writing the many pieces they would be penning during this crisis, but the team would need to quickly pivot their entire media strategy to meet the needs of the new media landscape.

The Solution

Walker Sands quickly regrouped and developed a new strategy that would insert Limeade into the conversation around employee care during the pandemic in a meaningful way. The Walker Sands team knew that reporters were being bombarded with outreach, and that irrelevant or unhelpful angles would fall by the wayside. Instead of promoting the data study as a whole, the team focused on the following three findings around employee care and well-being that would add the most value to workplace conversations trending in the media:

• 1 in 3 employees have left a job because they didn’t feel their employer cared about them as a person.
• 1 in 4 left a job because they weren’t treated with dignity by company leaders.
• 1 in 5 left a job because their employer didn’t support their well-being.

The three statistics were packaged into story ideas centered around showing care during a crisis, social distancing and best practices when working from home, and were sent to reporters at HR trade and mainstream business publications. Walker Sands positioned Limeade as a trusted source on employee well-being that could help businesses improve holistic employee care throughout the pandemic.

Beyond findings from the data study, Walker Sands knew that Limeade had additional relevant insights to share that would contribute to the conversation around employee care and well-being. The team leaned on Limeade’s CEO to serve as a thought leader on topics like how employers can better support working parents, how to prevent burnout across healthcare, ways to keep employee morale up, how to maintain your mental health while working from home and more.

The Results

By quickly pivoting the PR strategy to focus on the relevant findings from the data study and tapping Limeade thought leaders for actionable insights on how to care for your employees during the pandemic, Walker Sands was able to secure top-tier media placements while also helping Limeade share its core messaging around the importance of care in the workplace at a time when many organizations needed just that.

In two months, the team has secured 29 media placements, 11 of which were in top-tier outlets including:

• Forbes: 3 New Blockbuster Reports Show Job Burnout Escalating: What You Need To Know
• Inc: 3 Major Causes of Recent Employee Turnover, According to New Research
• The Observer: How to Make Work-From-Home Productive During a Pandemic: Expert Tips
• CNBC: How to protect your small business in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak
• Business Insider: Mental health benefits are becoming America’s most competitive office perk in the age of coronavirus

More importantly, Walker Sands was able to prove they were a trusted partner prepared to guide Limeade through any situation, with the Senior Director of Integrated Marketing saying:

“Walker Sands has been a true partner every step of the way in leading the Limeade response to the coronavirus crisis. As everyone was adjusting to the new normal, Walker Sands quickly pivoted their media strategy with great angles and creative ways to showcase how Limeade could serve as a resource for companies during this time.”

Employee care will continue to be a trend covered by the media, even in a post-COVID world, and Limeade is now armed with a trove of data that can contribute to conversations around employee care, both now and in the future. As the media conversation continues to evolve, Walker Sands will remain a strategic partner dedicated to helping Limeade share its message through top-tier placements.