We needed to grab attention and prompt our young adult audience to rethink their chronic back pain. Our solution was engaging and humorous: Painfully Wrong, Provocatively Right.

The idea was simple: If you think your chronic back pain is caused by something you did, you could be painfully wrong. Think again! It could be caused by an inflammatory condition: AS.

Patients who are part of a huge group of back-pain sufferers are shown they are painfully wrong about their assumptions. Banners and online videos poke fun at situations like sleeping awkwardly and overdoing it at the gym. Once diagnosed, they are part of a very select group—so we created a community, AS1, where they can spread the word, share, and get help. 

All channels used provocation and humor to motivate our audience to question whether they are painfully wrong about what’s causing their back pain.

We created a digital ecosystem with the AS website as the hub.

Display banners, online video and our Facebook community all delivered and amplified the Painfully Wrong, Provocatively Right story to drive patients to the website. To efficiently reach this small population, we leveraged sites like CBS Sports, Hulu, Pandora, Men’s and Women’s Health, and Facebook with our humorous and provocative campaign assets.

All media drove direct engagement with the symptom quiz on our website. This was the first step towards helping them identify inflammatory back pain as a potential explanation, then signing up for additional information and encouraging them to see a rheumatologist for diagnosis.

We created a social community on Facebook, AS1, where we syndicated tips, news and support for the AS community. In turn, our fans helped amplify our message about AS to those who might not be diagnosed yet.

Painfully Wrong, Provocatively Right unlocked a thirst for the truth.

Our videos captured and engaged our audience, achieving a 93% completion rate.

Content in our Facebook AS1 community generated phenomenal results with an engagement rate nearly 3 times greater than pharmaceutical benchmarks.

Interest in AS grew significantly, with a surge in the number of people engaging in our site relative to one year ago:

• Website visits increased 107%

• A 92% rise in quiz completes suggests chronic back-pain sufferers questioned the source of their pain more than before

• Rheumatologist Locator engagement increased by 91%, demonstrating that people were motivated to search for the right doctor

• CRM had a 62% lift in conversion, showing we were successfully moving people toward diagnosis and treatment

Our efforts led the right patient to the right doctor for AS diagnosis at an unprecedented rate.