Realizing some of the best ideas are external, Astellas leveraged crowd-sourcing to generate a wide variety of submissions to a global innovation challenge aimed at inspiring novel, non –treatment and non-medicine based ideas to change cancer care. The C3 Prize was created to inspire and foster ideas and potential solutions from anyone who is directly affected by cancer; offering $100,000 in grant funding and access to mentorship to help bring the brightest of those ideas to life.

The C3 Prize sought ideas for innovative tools, methods or processes to address four areas where patients living with cancer and the cancer community face the toughest obstacles along the cancer care continuum: navigating the health care system, adhering to complex medical care requirements, coordinating care and surviving life post-treatment.

The challenge kicked off in April with an integrated global communications campaign to build awareness of the program and drive submissions including owned, social, earned and paid media.

In September, five finalists were selected to pitch their idea live to a panel of judges, including celebrity entrepreneur Robert Herjavec. The session took place at Stanford Medicine X in front of an audience of 250 patients, medical professionals and innovators and was live streamed to thousands at medxlive.stanford.edu.

Three C3 Prize winners were celebrated later at an event during the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Annual Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark and announced via press release.

From the announcement of the finalists through the announcement of the winners, the team engaged media and leveraged social media channels to drive conversation around the finalists and how their ideas and the Astellas C3 Prize could have an impact on changing cancer care.

- 1,991 media placements including 50 original stories and blog posts, RMT, ANR and SMT/RMT reaching approximately 141 million stakeholders

- Coverage highlights include Print, Television and Radio outlets: Forbes.com, Huffington Post, CURE Today, SCRIP, The Chicago Tribune, People.com, The Doctors, Fox Health News, Facebook Live with Rebecca Jarvis (ABC)

- Over 42 million social media impressions and nearly 2,000 mentions of C3 Prize

- #C3Prize trended on Twitter during the live Twitter chat

- Support from 65 third-party groups, including Harvard, University of Cambridge and HealthBox

- Nearly 100,000 website visits and more than 1,500 video views

Feedback to the C3 Prize has been overwhelmingly positive across a diverse audience, including Astellas employees, community organizations, healthcare industry workers and patients; demonstrating that the challenge has successfully elevated Astellas’ profile in the crowded and competitive oncology market.

“Thank you Astellas Oncology for your innovative approach and commitment to cancer patients.”

- Community-based Organization

Beyond the communications success, the program achieved its overarching goal to help improve cancer care by providing grant money and mentorship to three winners with inspiring ideas, including Grand Prize Winner Diane Jooris, whose idea is virtual reality modules to reduce treatment related anxiety in patients. Diane’s experience with the C3 Prize has been so rewarding that she plans to name a new module “Stella” in honor of the company.