Source: EFPIA newsletter, October 2017
What does the #WeWontRest campaign mean to you and your organisation?
We saw this campaign as a learning opportunity to share experience and use social networks to communicate the industry’s innovation story to the general public in a positive way. As the pharmaceutical industry is often perceived as one of the culprits for inaccessibility of medicines, i.e. the high price of medicines, so for us at iF!, this was an excellent opportunity to emphasize the positive impact of the industry, as well as present a story of innovation.
What activities have you undertaken since you launched #WeWontRest in Croatia?
Before we started implementing the campaign, we formed a #WeWontRest team, where we brainstormed our goals for the campaign. We translated the campaign title as #NemaPredaha in order to increase the reach at national level and to measure the impact of each social media channel (LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). Also, we designed a #NemaPredaha page on the iF! web with basic info related to the campaign and linked it back to EFPIA #WWR page for additional content.
We also tried to think outside the box in order to gain the best reach possible within a Croatian context, so we used paid advertising using Google’s Display Network. Aside from this, we also found it crucial to keep iF! members updated on campaign developments. We therefore issued 3 #WeWontRest newsletters – each sent to all available employees working in the pharmaceutical industry to engage them in the campaign and to promote the #WeWontRest idea. We promoted all internal and external events that we participated in during the June/July period which was also one of the key pillars of our strategy.
What kind of feedback have you received from colleagues and other stakeholders?
Although we were apprehensive regarding possible negative reactions, once the campaign started, with the messages shared being focused on the benefits of research and innovation, the feedback gained from colleagues and the general public was completely positive. Also, what is interesting is that the campaign was positively accepted by journalists following healthcare topics. They perceived this as a step forward from discussing prices and expensive medicines towards the story of an innovative pharmaceutical industry meeting medical needs and offering solutions to persisting healthcare problems.
Are your members getting involved with the campaign and sharing on social media?
We approached this first period of the campaign implementation as a pilot stage to test the channels/media/social networks in order to see what will happen regarding reactions from the industry and the general public, and to measure which channel was achieving the best reach. From our LinkedIn analytics, our posts were seen by thousands of industry stakeholders. On social media, our own employees are liking and sharing the posts, but we can improve on this so we’re targeting employees via newsletters with guidelines on how to share posts. Also, we still have no pledges from Croats, which we see as an opportunity to make the campaign more personal. So there’s plenty more to be done.
Can you share any results since you launched?
There has been a real learning curve on social media, which has proven to be more cost-effective than conventional ways of communication. It has enabled us to create a communication database and a platform for communication with our audiences. During the first phase of the campaign, we published around 100 posts on social networks. The #NemaPredaha video was shown 1,553 times on Youtube and we have created a version of the video with subtitles in Croatian to display during events – sent to all iF! members. Our paid advertising on Facebook resulted in 16,719 video views and 32,489 people reached, whilst ads on the Google Display Network achieved 3,680,262 impressions There was also an 615% increase in visits to the iF! website during the campaign, compared to the month prior. For the next stage we are designing a landing page dedicated to the campaign’s innovation story, using learnings from the first wave. We feel extremely pleased that the campaign was positively received, with the focus on innovation centred on changing patients’ lives. We would like to thank EFPIA for this initiative and to everyone who participated in the campaign and supported it!
*#NEMAPREDAHA is of course…#WEWONTREST in Croatian!