The CDC recommends retail pharmacists become a provider of adolescent and adult vaccinations. By leveraging the convenience of neighborhood pharmacies and the relationships pharmacists have with their patients, getting vaccinated could be more convenient, affordable, and personal. However, several hurdles had to be overcome in order to drive adoption of this new process and make it a reality across the country.

Pharmacists have limited training on how to identify and consult with vaccine-eligible patients.

Pharmacists have limited access to training materials, computers, and WIFI at work.

Pharmacy employees are already extremely busy so any kind of new responsibility would have to be efficient and work within their current process.

Our objective was to increase vaccinations across the country by educating and empowering retail pharmacists to be more proactive in identifying, consulting with, and administering vaccines to patients, while making GSK the vaccine partner of choice by retailers and pharmacists alike.

One shot at a time, one patient at a time, pharmacists can help lead the country toward a shared national goal of protecting communities from vaccine-preventable diseases while increasing overall vaccination rates throughout the country. Together, GSK and retail pharmacists can be a VacciNATION.

Going beyond corporate goals, many retail pharmacists have a personal connection to their community and feel responsible for protecting public health. To harness this passion, we wanted to create a movement, a rallying cry for pharmacists to come together.

Every year, pharmacists serve thousands of patients within their communities. That's why we created a campaign that provides resources that help identify, educate, and counsel vaccine-eligible patients within local pharmacies, in turn making vaccinations more convenient, affordable, and personalized for patients.

Our interactive tools and downloadable resources combined with the familiarity and trusted guidance of local pharmacists can make in-pharmacy vaccination part of patient conversations every day.

Approach:

We researched the motivations, day-to-day tasks, and challenges of being a retail pharmacist and developed key insights around what was preventing them from reaching their personal and professional vaccination goals.

We then conducted a competitive analysis and uniquely positioned our platform by developing a more “human” campaign as a way to create more meaningful and deeper relationships between retailers, pharmacists, the campaign, and our client.

Audience:

National chain retail pharmacists & pharmacy technicians (Primary)

Independent retail pharmacist (Secondary)

Pharmacy patients (Indirectly)

Strategy:

Elevate the importance of vaccines by growing the pharmacist’s role as a trusted healthcare adviser by tapping into the pharmacist’s genuine concern for their patient’s well-being.

Educate pharmacy staff by providing trusted educational information, digital resources, and in-store tools from GSK to encourage proactive vaccination conversations.

Engage with pharmacists on their terms by creating a mobile-first integrated experience that supports nonlinear customer journeys and an omni-channel ecosystem.

Implementation:

To successfully launch, grow, and optimize our campaign, we coordinated timing and key deliverables across Research, Product, Design, Content, Technology, Marketing, and Media teams throughout the year. This ensured that the product roadmap, content strategy, and media plans were in sync and were delivering an optimal experience and campaign to our highly targeted audience of 78,000 retail pharmacists.

Placement & Scale:

Optimized mobile-first responsive microsite

42 search optimized detail pages

11 downloadable reference PDFs for offline viewing

7 APhA partnership guides

3 disease-specific vaccination event kits

6 reference pocket guides for pharmacists and techs

Pre-fabricated countertop flip charts and in-store posters

3 interactive training videos and a welcome video

18 targeted and personalized email campaigns

Targeted banner ads in Drug Topics, eMPR, Pharmacy Times, Pharmacy Today & US Pharmacist

Journal ads in Drug Topics, Pharmacy Times, and US Pharmacist

APhA Expo and NACDS trade show booths

Paid search

Reach

GSK’s integrated campaign delivered targeted contextual ads to pharmacists who were actively seeking information and solutions that aligned with our offering. This allowed us to maximize our budget and reach over 84.8% of US retail pharmacists and 51.6% of pharmacies, while driving deep engagement and conversion.

All digital campaigns were run as multivariant tests to further optimize campaign performance while outperforming industry benchmarks.

Engagement

4,911,055 Total impressions

210,893 Total engagements

58,708 Total website page views

9,448 Downloaded PDF resources

12,161 requested pre-fabricated resources

Impact/Achievement

The results exceeded expectations while driving positive ROI. It’s difficult to measure the full impact of the campaign across the industry. However, with over 21,000 resources in the hands of over 78,000 practicing pharmacists, GSK’s vaccine business saw an increase in the average number of vaccinations administered per patient and in total vaccines administered throughout the year proving that together, we can be a VacciNATION.