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Boehringer rewarded for digital communications excellence

Atrial fibrillation and stroke campaign 1 Mission 1 Million wins at Communiqué

Boehringer Ingelheim's online crowd-sourcing disease awareness campaign 1 Mission 1 Million - Getting to the Heart of Stroke won the Excellence in Digital Communications award at last week's Communiqué Awards.

The year-long campaign was carried out by Ogilvy Health PR and Ogilvy Digital Health on Boehringer's behalf, and involved groups from across the world entering community-driven projects involving atrial fibrillation (AF) and stroke, which were then voted on by the public to receive funding from Boehringer.

In total, 2m votes were cast against 184 hopeful entries from 36 countries, which led to 32 projects being funded.

Commenting on the campaign the Communiqué judges said: “This was a very, very clear winner and successful on so many levels with a campaign that had a massive global reach. It tied fresh, clean looking design to an innovative concept and the huge amount of work put into it really shows through.”

Each submission proposed an approach to increase awareness of AF-related stroke within the community whether through research, screening programmes or the creation of patient groups. 1 Mission 1 Million awarded €1m in funding to 32 winning projects spanning the globe from Malaysia to Canada across 18 different countries.

The company, whose key brand in the area is Pradaxa (dabigatran), worked with more than 40 patient and professional organisations during the campaign, including AntiCoagulation Europe, the Arrhythmia Alliance, the Atrial Fibrillation Association, the Stroke Alliance for Europe and the World Heart Federation.

Boehringer said the campaign had “inspired and motivated” their company and “is proof that, as part of an integrated campaign, digital and social media really can have a valuable place in our communications”.

The complex campaign generated very strong engagement figures, including 2m votes from the public and 200,000 comments on the website.

Within the company, the campaign was considered such a success that Boehringer last month launched a second phase of 1 Mission 1 Million that involved a partnership with Ammado, a funding platform for non-profit organisations.

The collaboration will continue to use the same online platform, www.heartofstroke.com, and this time it will allow projects aimed at preventing AF-related strokes to raise funds for a common cause in a centralised hub.

The public will be able to donate to their favourite projects on the website, and the first projects to reach 75 per cent of their fundraising target will receive the remaining 25 per cent from Boehringer (up to a value of €2,500).

In total the company is making €100,000 in reward donations available for the first projects to reach their fundraising targets. 1 Mission 1 Million has also launched petition and story-sharing activities to support its mission to prevent one million AF-related strokes per year worldwide.