In the province of Ontario, May 1st is Doctors’ Day. It’s a celebration of the 400,000+ interactions that take place between patients and doctors each day. To help the Ontario Medical Association celebrate doctors, Edelman launched Thanks Doc! — an online campaign that enabled Ontarians to thank their doctor for keeping them healthy.

Despite polling that demonstrated Ontarians’ perceptions of doctors was very high, pre-launch research conducted by Edelman demonstrated that any online conversations were not reflective of the positive sentiment towards doctors by the majority of Ontarians. To address this behaviour gap, we developed Thanks Doc! — an online platform designed to collect and showcase stories about Ontarians’ interactions with their doctor.

Throughout the six-week campaign, we received individual stories from more than 450 people from all-across the province. Nearly 2,000 people also ‘liked’ the stories submitted by others, creating an engine to drive positive online discussions that reflected Ontarians’ gratefulness towards their doctors. By the end of the campaign, the size of the Ontario Medical Association’s Facebook community had more than doubled in size, and over 22,000 Ontarians were exposed to positive stories about Ontario’s doctors.