More than 40% of adults in the United States are living with obesity. Obesity is a chronic health condition that is widely misunderstood. It has a stigma around it that prevents those impacted from asking for help, even from their own doctors. Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company, is trying to change that. Breaking the stigma around obesity starts with providing ways for those seeking help to get their questions answered.
CMI Media Group in partnership with Wavemaker, identified Reddit as just the place to do that. Reddit’s obesity community is large and highly active, with over 19k unique posts and over 300k comments last year. But most importantly, Reddit users are pseudonymous, or use a screen name. This gives them the freedom to ask questions about sensitive topics they may not feel comfortable asking the people in their lives or on other social platforms where they use their real names.
The agency landed on the idea of an Ask Me Anything campaign:
CMI Media Group promoted the AMA (9/28/22 - 10/14/22) prior to the event to encourage participation among the Reddit community
Novo Nordisk hired Dr. Tiffany Lowe-Clayton, a physician specializing in obesity, to introduce herself to the Reddit community and offer up her knowledge, creating a space free of stigma to get obesity information from a reputable source
Users came to the AMA on 12/6/22 and asked the doctor a variety of questions related to the causes, genetics behind, and treatments for obesity, which she answered publicly with the help of PR agency, FleishmanHillard
The post remains live on the It’s Bigger Than Me Reddit page to serve as an ongoing resource for the obesity community
The AMA received over 500 questions and comments. The response from Redditors was highly positive, showing a clear alignment between Reddit & Novo Nordisk’s target audience & a strong desire for education
A Reddit upvote is a sign from a user that the content they’re reading is valuable and over 5K users gave the AMA an upvote
The campaign CTR exceeded the pharma benchmark by 363%
The post received over 500K engagements at a rate of 3%, exceeding the pharma benchmark (1%) by 200%
