The Most persistent campaign

Background

MSD, a global pharmaceutical company, wanted us to envision a digital patient journey to raise awareness about Refractory Chronic Cough (RCC) - a cough that doesn’t go away despite all guideline-driven medical treatment. On this project, I created the concept, wrote the copy and created the GIF animations for the campaign.

Insight

Going through the research, I discovered that patients with RCC had given up trying to find a cure. They were resigned to their fate because nothing seemed to have worked. I researched this insight and found evidence to back this up in the form of testimonials, user interviews and discussions with subject matter experts within the organisation.

Idea

So, how do you reach people who don’t want to engage with their own condition? You persist, just like their cough. How? By using re-targeting banners - like most eCommerce companies - we created a campaign that used cookie information to reach our demographic and ‘persistently follow’ them around popular social media platforms with a unified message to inform, inspire and motivate them to visit our website, hosta.nu to learn more.

At the website, people are not only given more information about Refractory Chronic Cough, but also customized information about doctors in their location and the ability to book appointments and download a voice assistant to monitor their cough frequency and patterns.

Once they decided to book an appointment, we could re-purpose the banners once again to act as a reminder, so that they don’t forget to stay persistent in their fight for health.

Learnings

Since the nature of the subject was sensitive - the pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated and monitored - it was vital to have absolute confidence in the tone and content of our messages. This meant having discussions with various stakeholders to understand the industry and to craft a campaign that did not sound like a pharmaceutical company trying to sell medication.

While the project was to envision the future, it was important for me to have feasibility as a creative constraint. This meant filtering ideas that didn’t meet this criteria and fortifying our idea by understanding technologies like re-targeting and digital media buying, and finding cases that could corroborate our findings. This helped build a stronger case for our solution and gave me the confidence to pitch the idea to the global digital transformation head of the company.