Since Idis provide a service, rather than RX, we were only limited by individual guidelines on pharmaceutical company advertising within the media channels.

Challenge

Every day, thousands of people are driven to seek access to medicines outside the normal commercial routes. Idis answers that need with their Managed Access Programs (MAP). But awareness of these programs was low, so Idis wanted to get the message out about how they help people with unmet medical needs.

Objective

Increase business development contacts to Idis by 20%, equating to $2.5M, between July 2013 and September 2013.

Strategy

Communicate the impact Idis MAPs have on people’s lives through a series of documentary films, shot in an authentic style, on location, without scripts. Use social and online media to drive conversation and website visits. Broaden the campaign with collateral that targeted the intended audience both online and through more traditional media channels.

Execution

Collateral art direction, tonality, portrait and location photography combine to show Idis’ global scale, demonstrating that whether you’re a pharmaceutical company, physician or patient, you can say I did this with Idis. The entire experience is intended to present a ‘soft’ call to action to find out more about Idis MAPs without detracting from the integrity of the stories themselves.

The objective of the campaign was to increase awareness of Idis and generate an uplift of 20% in business development leads to hit $2.5M. The target audience were primarily senior executives within the pharmaceutical sector, but also physicians and pharmacists who would ultimately use the service to source the medicine they needed. So we had a relatively broad target audience that also had a global presence.

Journal inserts, postcard leavepieces, internal and external emailers, banner ads, print ads and conference materials all drove people to the brand microsite hosting the documentaries and supporting editorial content.

Collateral art direction, tonality, portrait and location photography were used to show Idis’ global scale, demonstrating that whether you’re a pharmaceutical company, physician or patient, you can say: I did this with Idis.

The unscripted nature of the stories being told, the use of the latest HTML 5 technology to deliver the fully responsive brand microsite, and the sheer scale and breadth of the campaign, all combine to form a highly engaging and memorable experience.

Traffic to the site from June to August 2013 was driven by a targeted media campaign using traditional marketing routes and digital media channels not normally exploited in this sector, including LinkedIn, Twitter, and a targeted Google AdWords campaign.

In the first 3 months the campaigned generated:

30,000 website visits

450 hours of video watched

800,000 LinkedIn targets reached

1,000 targeted Twitter followers

650 Retweets

40,000 Interactions

This resulted in us surpassing our target of increasing awareness of Idis and their MAP offering and specifically our goal of reaching our core target audience. We needed to generate a 20% increase in business leads, which again was surpassed with a total uplift of over 40%. In total, 13 New Business Leads through the website translated into 7 new proposals. Of these, 4 were considered solid leads that are estimated to be worth more than $5 million, twice the value of the goal initially set out.

All campaign messaging took its cue from Idis’ value of ‘patients are at the heart of everything we do’. The campaign was therefore planned around being minimally promotional, presenting a ‘soft’ call to find out more about how Idis MAPs get medicine to people who desperately need it.

To demonstrate the impact of this process on people’s lives, we used a series of documentary films to tell the real stories of people who had experienced it, finding access to the medicine they needed and now able to say: I did this with Idis.

To realise this, people were driven to a brand microsite that hosted the documentary films by traditional media, collateral materials and digital media channels not usually employed in this sector, including:

- Targeted LinkedIn advertising

- Twitter – promoted tweets and sponsored followers to tap into key influencers

- Google Adwords

- YouTube targeted advertising

Idis Managed Access Programs (MAPs) can provide patients who have run out of treatment options access to medicines that are otherwise unavailable, but awareness of them was low. All too often customers were using their clinical CRO to implement these programs rather than a specialist expert provider like Idis. We therefore needed a campaign that not only highlighted what a MAP is, but also positioned Idis as the undisputed leader and specialist expert in providing MAPs.