Our creative idea was simple: to be faster than the flu.

To create faster media, we needed faster data.

The challenge was that the official data source, the Centre of Disease Control, reported local outbreaks two weeks after the first signs appeared. We had to get ahead of what the CDC (and our competitors) were working with.

We knew that in an over-sharing world, the earliest signals of sickness are often posted on social media.

We turned to The Weather Company and IBM Watson’s cognitive technology to correlate conversation patterns with real-time weather data (another predictor of flu outbreak) and created the most predictive flu tracker tool in the US.

We used this data as a leading indicator to guide our media to where the flu was headed next.

We used micro-targeted video and display on Facebook, Twitter, Search and across Digital, showing people their local area sickscore, driving them to the closest Theraflu retailer, just before a nearby outbreak.

Using the Tracker’s data, we were also able to make ‘old’ media work as fast as programmatic. We worked with iheartmedia, modeling sickscore data against their expansive listener database, to programmatically decision radio in over 44 markets, optimizing investment as the flu hit different parts of the USA. Our market list changed at the same pace as the flu occurrences, hitting peak impression volume at the peak of the outbreak.

Finally, we integrated the tracker with the world’s largest retailer’s website, Walmart.com, with sickscores showing at a store level, so that potential sufferers were only one click away from Theraflu relief.

Our fast-moving media plan had a quick impact on sales: Theraflu sales were up 4% year on year during peak flu season (quarter 4 2016 vs 2015).

Of people exposed to the campaign we saw a 22% increase in sales

By creating a media plan that was faster than the flu, we put Theraflu top of mind and the top of shopping baskets.