Insights: Pulmonary fibrosis is a rare disease that afflicts 40,000 - 50,000 people in the US. Another 40,000 die each year. People with PF have difficulty breathing, develop scarring of the lungs, and will need oxygen to do simple things such as walking, eating, and brushing their teeth.
Objective: In the Spring of 2022, Boehringer-Ingelheim collaborated with PF Warriors to execute a cause-related initiative designed to help the organization increase awareness about the rare disease and its impact on caregivers.
Strategies
In the Spring of 2022, Boehringer-Ingelheim collaborated with PF Warriors to execute a cause-related initiative designed to help the organization increase awareness about the rare disease and its impact on caregivers.
Despite the limited budget, the team of volunteers incorporated the following tactics:
The marketing/social media/PR team of volunteers met before launce to discuss the metrics we would need to measure, and then again after the program ended.
Email to PF Warriors Members. The first email wave (using Mailchimp) was sent to 2,406 members to introduce the campaign. The email directed members to the landing page and encouraged them to view and share the videos. The open rate was 43%. A second email was sent to those who have not yet seen the original email. The open rate shot up to 75%, or 1,805 with nearly all of the members who opened visited the landing page.
Email to ILD Centers and Other Patient Groups. An email (using Hubspot) was sent to medical centers that specialize in pulmonary fibrosis called Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) and other patient groups. More than 71% spent time viewing the email and 22% clicked on the link taking individuals to the landing page.
Social Media Engagement. The public Facebook page attracted a great deal of traffic, driving viewers to each video. The chart on the right combines the Facebook engagement data from each patient video. Our learnings indicate that each individual has a close group of followers who were not only happy to react to the video, but also glad to share them with their own group of followers. The outpouring of inspiring messages was phenomenal as members share their perspectives, their thanks, and their views of the videos.
YouTube Visits. The video with the most views is the KOL piece, “Their Battle for Hope,” with over 1,100 views to this date. The video had an average viewing time of nearly four minutes, which demonstrates interest and high engagement. While most of the traffic from the patient videos came from Facebook, traffic from the KOL video primarily came from LinkedIn and from individuals visiting the landing page.
Public Service Announcement video. Because of cost, we did not have the budget to disseminate the PSA video nationally. Rather, two individuals reached out TV stations where patients in the video reside and pitched the PSA to public affairs directors. We were able to get 10 stations to say they would include the PSA into their rotation. They are:
Public Relations Campaign. 302 media groups picked up the press release and 547 placed the video online for people to view, demonstrating the impact of our national campaign in consumer media. We have included a few screen shots of the PF Warriors placements.
