Growing awareness and revenue for the American Heart Association

The American Heart Association (the Association) is the USA’s oldest and largest voluntary organisation dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. With over a century of history, the Association has invested more than $5 billion into cardiovascular and cerebrovascular research.

Its Advanced Stroke Life Support® (ASLS®) course equips healthcare professionals with critical stroke care skills. To expand its global reach, the Association's International Marketing department partnered with us to promote the course in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), and Mexico - regions where improved early stroke recognition and treatment could have significant patient care benefits.

This was the first time the American Heart Association’s International Marketing team had run a paid campaign for their ASLS® course, so there was no historical data to guide creatives, platforms, or audience targeting. With limited brand imagery and a diverse mix of platforms to consider, creatives had to be developed from scratch while maintaining brand integrity and work seamlessly across LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and Microsoft Ads.

Our objective was not only to drive awareness and purchases, but to generate learnings the Association could use to shape future global campaigns.

To meet the American Heart Association’s ambitious goals, we designed a strategy that combined data-driven targeting, creative innovation, and continuous optimisation. We focused on understanding what messaging and visuals resonated across audiences and platforms, testing these rigorously, and reallocating budget based on performance.

We launched a two-phase campaign:

• Awareness phase – Ads across Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Demand Gen, and paid search built initial reach and drove traffic to the ASLS® landing page.
• Conversion phase – LinkedIn, Facebook, Performance Max and paid search focused on driving downloads, clicks to purchase, and course sign-ups.

We targeted healthcare roles (nurses, paramedics, hospital administrators) and used the Association’s first-party data to build lookalike audiences and retarget warm audiences, such as website visitors and email subscribers.

Our search strategy combined brand keywords with broader terms related to stroke and ASLS® training. This multi-layered approach created a strong foundation for testing and learning.

Developing and testing new creatives

Key considerations included working with limited brand imagery, building recognisable brand presence, and creating assets that could adapt across multiple sizes and placements. The length of the course name also meant finding the right balance between clarity and attention-grabbing visuals.

We initially designed six creative concepts. After feedback and refinement, two concepts were selected for A/B testing.

Concept 1 – Certificate-style visuals

Professional, credible layouts with a strong brand presence through repeated logo assets and the Association's distinctive red.

Concept 2 – Bold calls to action

High-contrast typography and a strong CTA-led format designed to stand out in busy social feeds, reinforced by a striking red underscore.

Testing these visuals proved essential for understanding platform behaviour and guiding future creative decisions.

The campaign drove 793k clicks, with 237k PDF views, and over 28k clicks to purchase. Revenue increased by 13.3%, with an 89% uplift in Saudi Arabia and a 66.8% uplift in Mexico during the campaign.

Our A/B testing across platforms also revealed that:

• On LinkedIn, certificate-style imagery aligned well with the platform’s professional context, delivering a 49% lower CPC.
• On Facebook, bold CTA-led creatives achieved a slightly higher CTR and lower CPC, cutting through busy feeds effectively.

As the first campaign of its kind, the ASLS® activity successfully increased global awareness, drove strong engagement, and proved the value of creative testing, providing actionable insights to inform future global campaigns.