New Pew Internet research shows that health info is the 3rd most popular activity online, after emailing and search across the generations for 2010. Full article can be found via Mashable.
I am surprised that health info ranks so highly before shopping, video watching and other online activities we take for granted these days. Just re-enforces the message that digital as a channel in health communication is key, and as pharma we should play an active role in this communication channel.
Can your audience find your content, and is it delivered in the way they are looking for, because they are looking!
After the recent PharmaGuy blog post with a lovely picture of my cleavage, thought would start my first blog in a while (v.sorry) talking about BOOBS! This made me laugh, and thought it was an excellent PR activity incorporating social media into disease awareness activities. It’s a little cheeky, so please close one eye now.
CoppaFeel aims to educate young women to check their boobs for breast cancer, with the aim for British women coppin’ a feel of their boobies! Check out their website, Facebook, and Twitter page and support this cause.
CoppaFeel have incorporated a simple gorilla marketing technique by encouraging women to hijack boobs around the country to tell the mission of the organisation.The Boob Hijack aims to make Brits boob aware by ‘hijacking’ everyone and everything in sight with CoppaFeel! stickers; and get them copping-a-feel! There is also a Twibbon for tweeps to lend their support.
There is some great user-generated content, as well as some amusing Boob Hijacks across TV on YouTube. The cheekiest is probably from Bangbabes, probably not best to watch at work: www.vimeo.com/16305771
CoppaFeel have managed to get the element of social and target audience right, keep up the good work, let me know if i can help and keep coppin’ a feel
Viral video produced as part of the Leicester Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Partnership’s work to help reduce teenage pregnancies in Leicester.
Leicester City has a teenage pregnancy rate that is higher than the national average, and the original viral was created back in May 2009, initially blocked within 24hrs by YouTube, is now back live. Felt this was worth re-highlight has virals were discussed at a #hcsmeu tweep up.
This video is shocking, but so are the statistics on teenage pregnancy. This video has over 992,000 views on YouTube and also housed within website Hey-Babe
All the proceeds from the Kid K application will go to The Haemophilia Society, a charity that works in close partnership with the NHS to provide support and advice for people with bleeding disorders.
Its a nice game, user has to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible in two minutes. However its a shame that in itunes, it doesnt highlight clearly the charity element to the app that 100% of profits will be going to the charity, nor does it showcase Bayer as the sponsor, but rather Langland the agency that created it. I could not find any other mobile formats, so assuming the target audience for the app isnt the children or teenagers suffering, but their parents who are likely to have these devices?
Bayer launched the iphone app with more than 200 people converging on Thorpe Park, nice touch. This is part of Bayer’s Factor Fitness website - www.factorfitness.co.uk.
Great viral from the guys at Hi-Tech. So can you walk on water with your new trainers?
Loved the outdoor event created by Starbucks for World Earth day in NYC, enabling people to recycle their paper cup for a reusable cup, but highlighting the importance of recycling.
Another one, for the not easily offended, approach using Chatroulette a website which pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. However Condomerie.com who is using the website to increase awareness of HIV (automatically asking people to buy and use condoms). Here is the overview:
Lastly, are you looking for a job? How one man got his dream job by spending $6 on Google ad words campaign
Two showreels from the recent UK government campaign, on Chlamydia testing and sexual health awareness campaigns, which Profero London produced. I have recently blogged about both of these campaigns: How much do you know about sex & Say Yes to the Test. Nice to see both disease awareness campaigns can be successful, informative and inspire audience to engage.
There is still a wide debate within the pharmaceutical sector how the industry can and should be using social media to engage with doctors or patients.
As an industry, I do believe we forget that social media covers a wide range of activities. Just because we work in a restrictive environment does not mean we can not find an element of social media to fit with our marketing plans and more importantly provide information in a place where our audience are, and links back to our content.
My belief that one role pharma can play a more active role in is content. For example if you are developing a patient campaign, why do we as an industry just build a website? Which just has dry content, isn’t updated, isn’t promoted, and sits as a digital ghost town? If we are creating content that our audience will never find, how can we have a better relationship with them?
So we wanted to do something different for the brief we had from Bayer Schering Pharma Levitra global team based in Berlin. How can we create a digital campaign that will encourage 40+men to seek help for erectile dysfunction, and take away blame? But interestingly, how could we create a campaign which would work both at global & local country level? A video showreel can be found here.
This was our approach, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
The website became the hub of the campaign which would house content for those actively seeking erectile dysfunction information. There is interactive content taking men on a journey from denial to action of their condition. More interestingly the content doesn’t need to sit just in the website, but can be used on other sites, linking back into the in-bed site. With 60% of SEO rankings coming from link building, its so important to generate inbound links to maximise search rankings. Google also favours web 2.0 content, so this type of interactive content will also help improve these natural search rankings. The aim was to have content living and breathing in other areas of the web, which fed into the website.
For those men, that aren’t actively seeking erectile dysfunction content, we developed a series of animations with Aardman, as our target audience 40+ spent more time on video sharing channels than sports or news channels:
We have also produced content for viral campaign which was a leaked sex tape after Dennis had got his mojo back:
Well we also felt the need to tease the industry prelaunch so produced a press release teaser.
To deal with those difficult questions, and those discussed in forums, we tackled this by creating video Q&A with a doctor, which would be hosted both on website and on YouTube. The website was also designed around metrics, so use of diagnosis tools, questionnaires and videos could all be recorded and measured. So content could be evolved within the site updates.
In the past few weeks we have started to see some of the local versions rolling out including: http://www.enlacamacomonunca.com. I have also seen a very different Dennis in local language, its amazing how a different voice over changes the characters personality, hopefully I will be able to share when this is live. There also have been a lot of learnings, from the global site going live first, which means we can ensure the local markets will take on board what has worked and hasn’t.
On Thursday, there was a win at the revolution awards, which are a big digital industry awards, for this campaign. We won not only the healthcare/pharma category where we were up against BMJs Doc2Doc, Bupa and Innovex. But to my complete shock won the grand prix. As they were reading out the shortlisted names, I turned and said there is no chance of a pharma campaign winning against brands like X-Box, Cadbury’s, X-Factor, Sky, Orange or Samsung (to name a few)… but we did.
I am very proud that pharma work can stand alongside brands like these, but to win was beyond my imagination. So next time I hear creativity and pharma can’t mix, that we pharma in Europe can’t produce good and effective digital work, well I will probably be my usual self, opinionated to the core, and fight tooth and nail to get this industry where it so needs to be! Over and out from Portugal!
Nov 2010: Also really pleased that this campaign has won a BIMA (British Interactive Media Award) in healthcare category. Showreel of the winning campaign can be found here.
