Nearly 19 million US adults have asthma and, each day, 27,000 Americans miss work because of asthma. Asthma is estimated to cost the US almost $18 billion a year. Studies have shown that people with poorly controlled asthma are at an increased risk of visiting an emergency room, an urgent care center or being hospitalized compared to people with well controlled asthma. Importantly, many diagnosed asthma patients don’t even know their asthma isn’t well controlled. If they did, this could potentially lower the burden on the healthcare system.

Our target for this campaign is diagnosed asthma patients who overestimate their level of control. In fact, 4 out of 5 people who experience recurring asthma symptoms do not think they have a problem because they have adapted their lives to accommodate their asthma symptoms. Despite missing work, avoiding activities with potential asthma triggers, and using a rescue inhaler more frequently than recommended, our target believes their asthma is in control and that they’ve figured out how to manage it.

1 Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America http://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=8&sub=42

Pharmaceutical advertising is heavily regulated by a U.S. governmental agency – the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP). They are tasked with assuring prescription information is truthful (no overstatement of efficacy/promoted misuse), balanced (regarding risks/benefits) and accurately communicated (acknowledging the role of doctors in the decision-making process). This is accomplished through a comprehensive surveillance and enforcement program.

While unbranded communications are not reviewed by OPDP, the clients hold rigorous medical/regulatory reviews to assure the communications don’t link in any way to branded communication, and that the initiative addresses a true patient need.

The ‘Coping Isn’t Controlling’ Campaign was developed to help asthma patients recognize that they may not be well controlled. The challenge was to capture their attention, get them to question their level of asthma control and spark their curiosity to find out by taking the Asthma Control TestTM (ACT) on asthma.com. We created scenarios that were easily relatable to our target, reflective of how they may talk or think about their asthma –and introduced the possibility that perhaps they’re just fooling themselves (but not the people around them).

Post campaign launch results clearly show that the communications resonated with asthma sufferers, who followed the call-to-action by visiting the website to learn more and take the ACT.

Specific success metrics include:

1. Total asthma.com site visits/search queries

On average, asthma.com site visits increased +300% in the four months post-campaign launch. Further, search queries for asthma.com increased +3580% during this same period versus the period prior to the campaign launch. As an added benefit, this TV/display campaign was responsible for a +15% increase for ALL asthma category queries- a clear demonstration of the campaign’s impact among the entire population of asthma sufferers.

2. Increase in ACT completion volume, specifically completions among uncontrolled asthma sufferers.

In the four months post-campaign launch, ACT completions increased an average of +165% when TV was running versus the period prior to the advertising. More importantly, approximately 70% of those completions were among our specific target of uncontrolled sufferers. Additionally, of these completions, 40% were on mobile devices, indicating the effectiveness of a ‘multi-pronged’ communication approach that included mobile.

[Source: Omniture Site Catalyst]

Our opportunity and objective was to break through the target segment’s comfort zone with disruptive and surprising communications that would hold up a mirror to their coping behaviors. The ‘Coping Isn’t Controlling’ Campaign was the first of its kind to help asthma patients recognize that they may not be well controlled. We wanted to these sufferers to ask “could that be me?” which would spark their curiosity to learn more, take the ACT (Asthma Control Test) on asthma.com, and follow up with their doctor. We did this by creating scenarios that were easily relatable to our target - reflective of how they might talk or think about their asthma - and introducing the possibility that perhaps they’re just fooling themselves (but not the people around them).

A multi-pronged media approach was developed so that we could ‘disrupt’ uncontrolled asthma sufferers when and where they might be most receptive to our messaging (e.g. when they were in a ‘coping mode’ with their asthma). Our campaign came to life on several platforms, including TV, digital and mobile, all working together to motivate our target to take action.