Soccer legend Mia Hamm has been a passionate advocate for the bone marrow transplant (BMT) community since she lost her brother due to complications following a BMT more than 25 years ago.
For many people undergoing a BMT, their fight doesn’t end after the transplant. While it might cure their condition, there are serious complications that could follow—such as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which may impact more than half of the people receiving a BMT.
GVHD is a life-threatening and potentially chronic condition that occurs when donor cells attack the recipient's organs and tissues after a BMT. Damage caused by GVHD can severely impact a person’s daily life, and for some, can be deadly. GVHD impacts everyone differently – the symptoms may be difficult to spot but can quickly worsen and cause irreversible organ damage.
By partnering with Mia, Incyte aims to raise awareness of GVHD and its symptoms by driving people to GVHDNow.com to watch educational videos and download resources that empower people with GVHD to take urgent action when experiencing new/changing symptoms, as early intervention can help prevent long-term consequences.
Throughout Mia’s career, her fans motivated her to fight even in her toughest moments. Similarly, her family was by her brother’s side after he got sick and prepared for his BMT. Her family, along with his friends and healthcare team, were his fans—cheering him on and encouraging him to keep fighting. We want to remind those with GVHD that their fans—including us at Incyte—are here to support them.
Target audience:
Research
We conducted an in-depth analysis of the GVHD landscape:
We discovered patients need a strong support system to help them cope with their disease:
Insight
Just like athletes, patients need a community of “fans” to help them navigate GVHD. Athletes are spurred on by fans who encourage them, even during the most difficult times. The fans of patients with GVHD are their caregivers, healthcare providers, family and friends who inspire them to keep fighting. We saw an opportunity to use this compelling parallel to demonstrate how motivating it can be to have fans around you.
Strategy
Execution
In a video, Your Fans Are With You, Mia compares the game day preparation and anticipation athletes face to the experiences of two BMT recipients who are dealing with GVHD.
The campaign also included videos of the two patients, a website landing page (GVHDnow.com), earned and paid media, organic and paid social media, advocacy engagement and internal communications.
We conducted earned media at campaign launch via a Media Day, targeting industry, trade, and national consumer outlets. We also leveraged key milestones, such as awareness days significant to the community, as additional media outreach opportunities.
Other assets:
This program was very successful in achieving its objects focused on raising awareness of GVHD through video views and resource downloads. Results showed that paid, earned media and promotion of the campaign by patient advocacy groups generated a combined 165K+ video views and more than 3.4K website visits to GVHDNow.com.
There were 113 website resource downloads: 82 downloads of the patient symptom watchlist and 31 downloads of the doctor discussion guide, which were key resources featuring important awareness messaging. These numbers are quite high given patient population size.
Media: 814M impressions through earned, sponsored, social media and creative content.
Paid promotion amplified the campaign as our main campaign video saw a $1 cost per conversion. Engagement was high, with many notable positive comments from the GVHD community.
Paid online video distribution resulted in 125M+ unique monthly visitors, 2M+ impressions and 172 media placements in outlets such as CBS News, BUZZFEED, Business Insider, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, NBC News, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
