Millions of women live with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disorder (GERD), but until recently there was no outlet where patients could discuss their experiences or get information tailored to their unique gastrointestinal needs. AstraZeneca created interaction with NEXIUM loyalists in an interactive, engaging and targeted Facebook community, establishing a channel to empower and uplift women with GERD.

In four months, AstraZeneca opened new communication channels with direct patient engagement in a native social channel. To date, NEXIUM’s messages of inspiration, support and laughter have touched millions of patients.

Many pharma companies avoid creating branded social communities because of the regulatory requirements for brand promotion. AstraZeneca embraced the challenge – to engage patients responsibly and authentically, where they were spending a lot of time - on Facebook. The execution of our strategy was different because it was…

? Interactive: Still a novelty in pharma, we built systems to monitor and moderate conversations for patient safety, answer questions and share positive reinforcement.

? Engaging: Our copywriting and creative are a true reflection of the community of women who make up our fans. Our content is playful, funny, empowering and judgment-free.

? Precisely Targeted: To foster the most positive, shared experience for fans, it was important that we only acquired fans who were NEXIUM loyalists. Our content was amplified by a targeted, paid Facebook ad campaign to those patients who had opted-in to NEXIUM communications in the past.

Our community has touched millions of women who suffer from GERD, and thousands of those women who are NEXIUM loyalists follow our page and engage daily. Consumption of content, engagement and clickthroughs to download loyalty offerings like savings cards have been staggering, compared to pharmaceutical and healthcare brand benchmarking. In the first five months there were 175,000 fans and more than 4 million people reached.

Perhaps, most significantly, more than 85 percent of all comments have been about the brand and more than 1,200 patient comments and questions have been responded to in real-time, building and reinforcing a patient community. Building capabilities for one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical brands to engage directly with patients about a drug on Facebook was a transformative result that will set new industry expectations for direct to consumer marketing in the future.