Relaunched Employee Wellbeing Company Lands 78 Nationals

How do you shift perception of your value proposition when your service has been established for almost two decades? 

That was the challenge facing employee wellbeing and performance experts GoodShape when they partnered with us in 2021.  

Shifting the wellbeing narrative ‘for good’ 

As FirstCare, the company had pioneered employee absence management, but its offering had grown significantly since its launch in 2004. Now, it not only provided employers with data on ‘how many employees are off work’ and ‘for how long’, but trends on the underlying reasons too – empowering better leadership decisions: ‘for employees, for employers, for good’. 

With the COVID pandemic underlining the need for its service, 2021 saw FirstCare rebrand as GoodShape. Its mission was to challenge the ‘wellbeing washing’ pervading corporate leadership – supporting the C-suite to replace well-meant words with evidence-based action.   

Our task was to cut through the media noise: surfacing GoodShape’s productivity insights, exposing the risk facing businesses, and putting wellbeing at the top of the boardroom agenda. 

Guided by the data 

GoodShape boasts the largest database of its kind, covering more than 750k employee records and 1.2bn wellbeing data points.   

We worked closely with GoodShape’s marketing, sales, and data science teams to leverage this unique proprietary asset, identifying unique insights to reinforce its distinctive perspective, and positioning it as the credible authority in its field. 

We were able to proactively add value to planned news events, such as Office for National Statistics (ONS) labour market releases. And we reacted at speed to breaking news stories, such as the COVID ‘pingdemic’ phenomenon.  

Our primary targets were tier-one national and trade press, offering: 

Exclusive data – aligning GoodShape’s data and message with the latest business, economic, and health stories
Thought leadership articles – to deliver key brand messages and ignite discussion around corporate leadership and responsibility
Feature contributions – to build relevance and expert profile
Rapid response commentary on breaking news – to drive brand profile and credibility among the C-suite

The numbers don’t lie

Within 24 months, our partnership with GoodShape has achieved: 

259 pieces of coverage 
78 national stories (30% of total) 
48 website/blog backlinks (19% of total)

63 average domain authority of linking sites 
16.4m online coverage views (83% websites / 16% social) 
56.8k social engagements 
2.7m social coverage views (37% open / 64% dark) 
43.3k social shares (15% open / 85% dark) 

GoodShape is now recognised as a credible source for data and expert opinion on workforce health and its relationship with organisational performance and economic prosperity. 

It generates inbound enquiries from prospects, influencers, and national and leading trade media. 

It contributed insight to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on COVID, which is investigating the pandemic’s impact on NHS staff.  

One quarter, 10 ‘nationals’  

Rising inflation, a cost-of-living-crisis, and ongoing industrial action… All stories that have dominated the media agenda in 2023. And all stories with a bearing on the health of workers and businesses alike.  

By leveraging GoodShape’s data on the rates and reasons of employee absence, and the resultant impact on service delivery and cost, we secured 43 pieces of coverage in Q1 2023 – the most successful quarter of our partnership to date.  

Of those pieces, 10 were with national publications – 23% of coverage within the quarter.   

Testimonial

“We introduced the GoodShape brand to market at a time of massive upheaval in the world of work. We needed to let business leaders know that our service offered something truly different, which would help them navigate those challenges and come out stronger.  

“We’d done exciting things with our rebrand, which clearly announced that we were taking a very different approach to our competitors. And we wanted that uniqueness – almost disruptiveness – to be seen and remembered by our prospects, our clients, and the industry at large.  

“3THINKRS have been great at understanding the nuances of our message, and working with our data scientists to draw out the stories that will support it and resonate with the press. The coverage speaks for itself, and it’s a great trust signal when talking to existing and prospective customers.” 

Terry Osborne, Director of Marketing, GoodShape 

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