The picture of MS being painted by pharma – adverts of people climbing mountains and content driven by lifestyle tips – was of a condition you coped with

The MS community told a different story. People with MS could achieve amazing things, but often it was the everyday activities which caused the biggest problems

What if you’re a marathon runner, but can’t put on your socks? Or a model who can’t apply mascara; a designer who can’t draw; a keynote speaker who can’t get on the stage?

We had to do more, take on these challenges and create tangible solutions. If we wanted to make a real difference, we couldn’t do it alone

We needed to reach out to the MS community and ask them to share their everyday challenges with us, then we needed to challenge the world to solve them

We needed it to be The World vs.MS

Across social media channels, we opened-up ongoing conversations with the MS community – building relationships with community members to understand more about their daily challenges of living with MS

Working alongside our external steering committee members, we developed strong relationships allowing us to tailor our supportive content

Our website hosted useful educational content and a wealth of user-generated content, to drive better understanding of the condition and hear real-life stories

Video content drove engagement with community members – reaching them at appropriate moments around the 3 key phases

Across social and paid search, we ran targeted adverts focused on hero content. This was enhanced by local market promotion including live events, offline advertisement and patient advocacy organizations

This was supplemented by community management allowing us to build relationships with community members and respond to engagements in near real time with speed and authenticity unheard of from a pharma campaign

Throughout the campaign:

Our social following increased by 2,000%

Achieved 77% share of voice

25,000,000 social impressions over 3,600 posts

Over 1.8 million engagements across our social media channels

The BladdeRunner app is in development and will address the needs of those suffering from bladder issues – 80% of MS patients

We participate in daily conversations with patients, providing near real-time support, responding to interactions and helping them navigate the overwhelming discourse online

We continue to deliver meaningful solutions through ongoing insight development. Notably - we asked community members about brain health and discovered 67% of people living with MS never discussed brain health with their neurologist, a challenge we tackled through the creation of the official brain emoji

We successfully:

Developed a global platform for change

Repositioned Sanofi Genzyme at the forefront of MS patient support

Revolutionized pharma’s approach to patient support

The World vs.MS is a socially driven initiative with a single purpose – to improve the lives of those living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Through establishing our community, we have set up a revolutionary platform for change, designed to empower, unite and support people living with MS everyday

To date we have created an app which will help millions living with bladder issues, a brain emoji inspiring conversations around brain health and through 1.8 million social engagements, we have supported patients, responding near real time to questions providing information they need to improve their lives with MS

The MS community is extremely active online and we knew that to bolster Sanofi Genzyme’s reputation, we needed to reach out to those living with MS

Our strategy was ambitious – to create one centralized campaign, run by a European team and promoted by local markets. Focused around 5 key channels we built an ecosystem that would allow us to:

1) Grow our following through demonstrating commitment

2) Engage our audience through near real-time responding

3) Create tangible solutions for problems that impact people living with MS

This was achieved through 3 phases:

Challenges: ask the MS community which everyday challenges caused them the most difficulty

Ideas: engage the world to submit solutions

Development: the community choose their winning solution to be brought to life with a €100,000 grant

We worked with 3 key partners – MS Ireland, WIRED and Entrepreneurial Spark whose expertise helped shape each phase

Multiple Sclerosis is an incurable and degenerative neurological condition affecting 2.5 million people in the world

Most people are diagnosed in their twenties and thirties and as a chronic, progressive condition – face a life of ever-increasing disability

MS presents differently in everyone, with a multitude of unpredictable symptoms turning everyday tasks into every day challenges. As such, living a ‘normal’ life, is near impossible for many

Sanofi Genzyme approached us with 2 objectives:

1) Generate greater awareness of Sanofi Genzyme in MS

2) Demonstrate their support to people living with the condition

With more than seventeen MS treatments being marketed by numerous pharmaceutical companies, and hundreds of MS patient organizations, it was clear that many patients were being overwhelmed by the volume of information on offer

The key challenge for Sanofi Genzyme was how to cut through this, and provide a truly differentiated and fundamentally useful patient support offering