Building upon the Bristol-Myers Squibb marketing campaign in which cancer patients held flags with messages of self-empowerment such as, “The power to fight cancer may already be inside me,” we sought to create a unifying theme highlighting the communal effort it takes to fight cancer. Ready. Raise. Rise: Join the Revolution in Cancer Research made the flag the centerpiece of the campaign and an iconic symbol representing I-O research and the power of the immune system. Spurred on by own his own family’s struggle with cancer, celebrity spokesperson Eric Stonestreet issued a call-to-action, rallying tens of thousands of people to rise up together in fighting cancer by raising a virtual flag in honor of someone affected by the disease. Virtual flags gave people a way to show their support for those with cancer while also sharing links to an educational site, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of support and awareness.

The BMS Twitter feed was used to amplify the campaign using different kinds of text, static and dynamic visual content. Once we started learning which of these formats received the most engagement, we worked with our media-planning partner Media Vest to promote this content to cancer-connected consumers on Twitter through a paid strategy. A Facebook ad creative was created, then tested and targeted to people who had donated to a cancer charity, who fit our demographic profile (ages 55+) and who followed cancer education and advocacy organizations’ pages. Using a campaign-specific hashtag – #RaiseYourFlag – individuals could post their flags on their social media platforms and select a cancer group to support.

Engaged audiences in immuno-oncology (I-O) research education through a strong call-to-action on social media channels:

-- More than 11M organic social media impressions

-- Facebook click-through rate of 18% (benchmark: 14%)

-- #RaiseYourFlag used more than 2,250 times

-- Paid media engagement rate on Twitter was 5% (3x the pharma benchmark)

-- Reached more than 750K people via the organic sharing of campaign information by patient advocacy groups

-- Ultimately, 50,000 virtual flags – each containing a call-to-action to learn more about I-O research with a link back to the campaign website – had been raised between May 19, 2015 and September 1, 2015, far exceeding the goal of 1,000 flag. Additionally, the campaign drove 45K+ unique visitors to www.ReadyRaiseRise.com to learn more about I-O research (benchmark: 12K), at a time when there was no other activity stimulating traffic to the I-O research DTC ad campaign site