64,000 people are diagnosed every year with type 1 diabetes. While early screening could let them spot T1D in advance, the diagnosis usually comes as a complete shock–in the emergency room with life-threatening health complications or when lifelong insulin dependence begins.

Common misconceptions were holding people back, preventing them from taking action.

- Many don’t know there is genetic risk with T1D. But any family history makes someone up to 15x more likely to develop it. Most parents aren’t aware of this increased risk or think they can “watch and wait” for symptoms to appear.

- Most people also believe T1D is a juvenile disease. So young adults think they’re out of the woods—that it couldn’t happen to them. But half of new T1D diagnoses happen over the age of 18.

We set out to shift the belief system around T1D, educating about the risks and driving urgency to screen.

Our mission was to empower the public, drive home the risks of T1D, and encourage people to take action. So, we created a bold campaign to get people to rethink type 1 diabetes– to Screen It Like You Mean It.

But we didn’t just want to urge people to screen. We wanted them to be committed and personally invested in what screening would mean for them. So, we created The 1 Pledge movement to kick off the campaign–a celebrity-driven initiative that showcased their authentic, emotional, and compelling stories about the value of screening during National Diabetes Awareness Month.

The campaign focused on 2 target audience segments, most likely to benefit from T1D screening:

Parents or caregivers of at-risk children

At-risk young adults ages 18-39

Both of our audience segments severely downplayed their or their children’s risk levels, which made them less likely to consider screening messaging alone. We had to make T1D risk feel relevant and urgent to people who weren’t paying attention.

Then, we had to drive awareness and action, which meant filling an educational void and getting people to commit to screening. This education was especially important in the face of a lack of HCP awareness of the test.

We partnered with celebrities and influencers closely connected to T1D to launch The 1 Pledge movement. Through a major event in Times Square, (coinciding with National Diabetes Awareness Month) earned media and paid & organic influencer campaigns - we urged people to Take the 1 Pledge.

Celebrities USHER, Robin Arzón, and Adam Schefter, and influencers kickstarted organic and paid campaigns across TikTok, Instagram, Meta, and X. Influencers ranged from well-known T1D patients like Justin Eastzer to caregivers such as Cara Loren, and HCPs like Dr. Mike Natter.

Influencers flooded social channels with raw T1D stories. Celebrities offered powerful ‘pinnacle’ moments by leveraging their platforms to share T1D stories. We also whitelisted in-feed posts to further amplify influencers’ messages to a specific T1D target audience, so we could advertise influencers' content on their social channels, harnessing their authenticity.

At the event, we created a partnership between agency, brand, and the Regulatory Committee to review influencer posts in real-time and allow influencers to authentically post while physically still at Times Square, breaking down traditional pharma barriers.

We expanded our reach by livestreaming the event on YouTube - the first-ever pharmaceutical company live event promoted via the YouTube Masthead.

The 1 Pledge and Sanofi had the highest SOV online within the general diabetes conversation at 37% during American Diabetes Month. For T1D, we dominated with 85% SOV.

300% increase month-over-month in online searches for “type 1 diabetes screening”. Our top 10 influencers earned an organic 7% Instagram engagement rate (average is 1.5-3%). Whitelisted content garnered 28.6M influencer impressions and organic content earned 15.5M influencer impressions.

Influencer ads directly drove 368K+ visits to The1Pledge.com. TikTok equaled 67% of all link clicks, with an average CTR of 2.20% (benchmark of 0.5%-1%).

A brand lift survey for the campaign based on our TikTok content showed that The 1 Pledge led to an +18-point statistically significant lift in net likelihood to get screened, a +13-point significant lift in net likelihood to recommend screening and a +19-point significant lift in website association.