Winner
A unique approach to congress conversations: Not Just One Disease blog at ASCO
Summary of work
Lung cancer is the biggest global killer but it is not just one disease: a lack of understanding about the disease and its impact on patients still exists.
Instead of one-way communication during ASCO 2014, the largest global cancer medical congress, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) implemented an innovative, online, multichannelled approach to allow the lung cancer community to drive a dialogue around the most important issues related to the disease.
A group of lung cancer specialists, patients and scientists shared their lung cancer journeys with an audience of thousands on the BI blog, challenging misconceptions and bringing to life the message that lung cancer is ‘Not Just One Disease’. The disease-focused blog was the first of its kind in pharma and open for comments: a brave move in a conservative industry.
The campaign surpassed all expectations and BI cut through the noise: over 50,000 tweets and 200 million impressions during the five-day congress. The blog received 14,855 page views and 3,693 unique visitors and using #ASCO14, there were 6.2 million impressions of @Boehringer on Twitter, a 350% increase from 2013. The blog generated editorial coverage as industry press, including PMLive, recognised this unique approach.
Judges’ comments
If you look at Boehringer Ingelheim’s consistency in social media they are one of the few pharma organisations pushing ahead in this space. They established a clear strategy for evaluating risks and benefits, added in non-pharma social media community management and applied it within the industry. This was a really well executed campaign and a clear winner. Outside of pharma companies, anyone would have been proud of this campaign, which showed that a pharmaceutical company can be a trusted partner in oncology.
