Excellence in Engagement Through Digital Channels

Summary of work

Today, more than 33.9 million people have severe asthma, yet significant opportunities remain to expand care. These patients can face an extensive journey (up to seven years) to receive their diagnosis. Once diagnosed, they can experience additional delays and challenges to accessing the specialist care and treatments needed to manage their condition. As a consequence, their lives are disrupted by regular visits to the emergency room, hospital admission and the potentially debilitating side effects of long-term exposure to oral corticosteroids.

Driven by AstraZeneca’s commitment to improve patient outcomes and to challenge existing approaches to care, Edelman and MHP, in collaboration with AstraZeneca, PRECISION and GAAPP, were tasked to demonstrate the realities of living with the disease and highlighting the opportunities to improve care for patients around the world. We did this by leveraging the actual stories, voices and realities of real patients – leading us to create an independent, impactful, thought-provoking, emotive documentary to ‘disrupt’ the traditional pharmaceutical policy and disease awareness campaign targeting healthcare professionals and policymakers through digital and multichannel strategies. BREATHLESS: The Story of Life with Severe Asthma tells the powerful stories of three patients and issues a clear challenge to prioritise urgent reform in severe asthma care.

Judges' comments

Targeting policy makers is always a tough challenge. The campaign started from clear and measurable objectives and delivered very good results. The content was very emotive and was delivered, with support of partners, through a multi-pronged approach with diverse channels and platforms.