Excellence in Engagement Through Social Media/Digital Channels – Over £51,000

Sponsored by

Winner

'Can We Rebuild Cartilage?' Knee Osteoarthritis Clinical Trial Recruitment Campaign

by Langland for Novartis Clinical Trials

Summary of work

Recruiting patients for clinical trials is extremely challenging. 80% of trials fail to recruit on time. Delays can result in millions of pounds of lost revenue. To successfully recruit using paid media, a sophisticated creative and media strategy is needed to ensure success, as typical industry benchmarks for online advertising wouldn't translate into sufficient ROI.

For our client's clinical trial, we used a combination of creative messaging, educational website content and media audience and geo-targeting using trusted media channels to successfully deliver 100% more patients than expected, one month earlier and $10,000 under budget.

We developed creative that cut through the clutter of mainstream advertising by demonstrating the primary motivating proposition behind the trial, asking them 'can we rebuild cartilage?', and to help us find out. Media targeting techniques usually employed at larger scale in consumer advertising were used to maximise scale against a niche audience, while minimising wastage. Reporting and optimisation across the recruitment funnel allowed us to maximise efficiency by making small changes at the top, that would have measurable success for participant recruitment.

The results proved that clinical trial recruitment using paid media can be successful, and our approach is being used in numerous additional studies.

Judges’ comments

This project took place in a fairly niche area and did a fantastic job in encapsulating the situation. It had a really well structured background, using data to support the clear challenge with clinical trial recruitment and unmet need for treatment options - Impressive! The judges thought it was a masterclass in digital strategy. Incredible! With a brilliant use of an eligibility questionnaire to optimise ad serving and some great use of innovative platforms such as Crossix to build lookalike audiences and ensure outcomes were exceeded. Fantastic piece of work!