The biggest restriction we faced was complying with US government (FDA) regulations and practices for pharmaceutical communications regarding an unbranded disease education campaign. With these regulations in mind, we wanted to break through in an effective way – socially. Our campaign launched digitally, across YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and an original website – Takeitfromafish.com. And the campaign remained compliant on Twitter even as we communicated in real-time.

We started 15 April 2014 by launching takeitfromafish.com loaded with health, exercise tips, diet advice and “spokesfish” videos on YouTube.

YouTube in-stream advertising and the site added videos from July through October meant to entertain and educate the target about the effects of diet and exercise to help lower triglycerides.

In July, paid search and Twitter also entered the mix. The @fromafish Twitter handle gave Marty and Sal social voice and presence. And, uniquely for a pharma campaign, @fromafish tweeted in real-time, commenting on current topics and events. In doing so, we engaged with other big brands and leveraging their follower reach for more awareness.

From August, we ran banner advertising on WebMD, Turner sports and Field & Stream to reach the target, plus original pins and repins on Pinterest engaged with the target’s loved ones – a community dedicated to finding healthy recipes and diet tips.

Awareness:

• After only 3 months, achieved 11% category lift on searches for high triglycerides and then sustained this consistently until the end of campaign.

• On Twitter, we were able to gain significant followers with average month-on-month growth of 288%.

• The Twitter campaign achieved the 4th highest total follower counts ever in pharma.

Action:

• Search CTR was 92% higher than pharma benchmark.

• Used Twitter Lead Gen cards (unbranded pharma first) to earn leads 5% more efficiently.

• On YouTube, average view completion rate was 100% higher than pharma benchmark. 20% of views were organic (vs 5% average), reducing reliance on paid media.

• Banner Ads earned 3x the display banner CTR benchmark and 4.5x Google Display Network benchmark