Excellence in Corporate Communications – External Stakeholders

Summary of work

AstraZeneca’s bold ambition pre-COVID-19 was to eliminate cancer as a cause of death, however the pandemic derailed this. To get their primary objective back on track, they wanted to play a part in rectifying the disruption to cancer care services globally.
By the third quarter of 2020, cancer diagnoses had fallen by approximately 40%, caused in part by people’s fear of contracting COVID-19 at hospitals and clinics.
Across the globe, the pandemic publicity deterred patients from seeking medical attention for new symptoms or attending routine checks.
To help get cancer care back on track, AstraZeneca launched an awareness campaign New Normal, Same Cancer with the simple call to action: Don’t wait. Contact your doctor. Get checked.
Central video assets were designed and created with input from global patient advocacy groups (PAGs) representing the main cancer types.
This video content was then shared with AstraZeneca country offices who worked with local PAGs to tailor the campaign to their needs.
Assets were made available in October 2020 and the campaign has already been rolled out in more than 40 countries. Using social media as the main focus of communication the campaign slogan has reached more than 1 billion people across the world.

Judges' comments

We loved the ambitious and global scale of this campaign with significant resource support. It had clear insight of the need, a good sense of partnership and a bold and ambitious approach. We saw it had impressive reach, good engagement with patient organisations, harnessing internal as well as external stakeholders and delivered good results.