Company: Eli Lilly and Company
Company background: Eli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. For 145 years, we have remained committed to the people we serve - starting with those who take our medicines, and extending to health care professionals, employees, and the communities in which we live.
One of those medications is Taltz, an FDA-approved treatment* backed by over a decade of clinical research and relied on by patients since its approval in 2016.
*For adults with psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis, and for adults and children with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.
Contact: Jacqueline Ireton
Title: Digital Experience and Insights Lead
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Marketing
1. Tell us about your unique marketing campaign and/or promotion as well as your goal and key strategies.
In Q1 2021, the Taltz Facebook page launched a new ad featuring a same-sex couple in its creative. Goals for featuring this specific ad creative were two-fold: to drive awareness of the benefits of Taltz, while inclusively reaching its diverse patient population in a relevant and meaningful way.
The inclusive creative and thoughtful copy combination was launched as a dark ad and targeted to the relevant patient population. Although the initial consumer reaction was supportive, the response quickly shifted as it became rapidly shared by opinionated groups and individuals.
2. Share your plan with the target audience and how your digital technology (e.g. social media management platform) helped drive success for the campaign.
Lilly USA’s community experience team was able to leverage the Khoros Marketing platform to track not only the inbound comment volume shared to this specific ad set, but also provide important context to the broader enterprise social media and Taltz brand teams using custom Khoros content labels. By utilizing contextual label sets, including labels that tracked positive advertising compliments, negative advertising complaints and neutral, yet unproductive or unrelated commentary, community experience team leadership was able to define the impact of the advertising creative on the brand health, including:
- Within the first month of the same-sex couple creative launch, there was a 2,575% increase in inbound volume to Taltz’s Facebook page.
- There was a notable 14,713% increase in advertising-specific comments, of which 97% was negative.
- From an advertising perspective, the creative saw +5.5x qualified site engagement (BVS score) than a campaign average for the same period.
While the nearly 2,600% increase in inbound comment volume would be overwhelming enough for most community experience teams, the regulated nature of our industry added another layer of complexity and urgency to rapid review and social care response. Amidst the influx of volume, teammates had to also remain focused on identifying and reporting any product adverse events and product complaints to the FDA as required by regulation.
Despite the increase in negative sentiment and the additional regulatory concern, the Lilly USA community experience and Taltz teams remained steadfast in its support of its patient populations and continued the now controversial yet meaningful ad run across the brand’s Facebook page. “It is truly Lilly’s commitment to diversity and inclusion that has inspired our inclusive creative. It is the foundation – and we want to ensure all patients feel seen, heard and can relate,” said Taltz consumer brand director, Mandi Sasse.
In month two, the community experience team took a more aggressive approach to its response protocol, leveraging the Khoros Content Center to store approved reactive responses for the steady influx of opinionated replies to the ad.
- Sample response to negative reaction: “Hi, <first name>. We try to be sensitive to everyone with our advertising, but it's important to us that we support our diverse group of patients.”
- Sample response to positive reaction: “Hello, <first name>. We're glad you enjoyed our ad. Thank you for taking the time to let us know!”
While the real-time responses back to users did not completely flatten the negative advertising response, there was a noticeable uptick in positive sentiment fueled by the endorsement of the creative and engagement appreciation, like: “Thanks for showing diversity in your ads. I have many gay relatives, friends, and acquaintances. It's a shame people can't even see an ad without spouting hateful things.”
3. What were the results? Tell us how it helped you serve customers, protect your brand and/or grow your business (increased subscribers, engagement increase, increased awareness).
The Taltz brand continues to celebrate and highlight diverse talent in its advertisements and understands that a variety of perspectives is critical to continuous innovation, ability to help people and create lasting social impact.
The Taltz and community experience team continue to work together to isolate the learnings and impact. The Taltz team is committed to continued diverse and inclusive creative and have used these learnings to maintain the integrity of their ads. The team is aware of the social progress that is still needed and hope this helps in some way. From the Taltz consumer brand director, Mandi Sasse, “While we don’t enjoy negative social sentiment, we stand united for all people and will not acquiesce to negativity.”
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