Surgery Saturday was a successful Instagram campaign that invited viewers into Stanford Medicine’s operating rooms, a place normally accessible only to health care professionals. Operating rooms are usually shrouded in secrecy, and there’s long been a misconception about what a surgeon should look like. With Surgery Saturday, we succeeded in demystifying the field, showing that surgeons are real people, and emphasizing that surgery as a career is open to those from all backgrounds. Surgery Saturday captured and sustained our audience’s interest, with each post generating significantly higher-than-average engagement. All 12 photos in the campaign were among our 50 most popular Instagram posts of the year, while three were in the top 10.
From the Judges
This program was unique in that there doesn’t appear to be another academic institution that utilizes surgery-focused photos in campaigns. The surgery-focused photos made the viewers comfortable and at ease with a subject matter that can normally be upsetting/disturbing.
