Over the past year, the Edelman Trust Barometer Study found that trust in healthcare companies has declined globally. More specifically, the US has fallen from trust to distrust and declined by 21 points in their trust in media to report accurate information about healthcare. The lack of trust needs to be addressed in the healthcare industry in order for companies to move the reputational needle.
Before we could develop and launch our signature corporate campaign to increase AstraZeneca’s corporate reputation and stakeholder trust, and reach and engage our priority audiences, we needed to better understand their current attitudes. We conducted research which found:
Engaged Patients – 3 in 5 are very familiar with AstraZeneca.
Specialist HCPs – Very familiar with us in general, associating us most with science, however, 1 in 4 are not at all familiar with our wider work to support patients.
Policymakers – Many are still learning about us with 2 in 5 not aware of us or only knew little about us before the pandemic.
Investors – 98% know us for being leaders in innovation and 94% believe we make a positive impact through innovation.
The problem to solve? Our corporate story was not doing as much as it could to drive trust and improve our reputation. Our stories and programs show tremendous potential to grow trust – if only more people knew about them.
Typically, corporate America measures “number one” companies by revenue: but revenue has little correlation to reputation. Our strategy was to use storytelling to show what it means and what it takes to be number one in human and societal impact.
We took a deeply human, “slice of life” approach to show the surprising ways our science changes people and makes them see themselves anew. By showing the humanity of our ambition, we’ll be known for the big difference we make for millions of patients around the world and the actions we take to advance science, sustainability, and health equity in the US.
We focused on three objectives:
Awareness – Increase and expand awareness to give audiences a more holistic view of who we are and what we do.
Attitude – Build positive perceptions and trust so audiences see us as a source of credibility, who are doing good work and doing the right thing.
Action – Inspire and motivate audiences to interact with content and connect with broader AstraZeneca communications.
Human storytelling was at the center of our campaign. We developed content that brings to light the everyday impact we are making on individuals in communities big and small.
Our first two anchor stories, Nico and Chloe, highlight our impact in asthma and oncology innovation. These are not your typical pharma ads – and we didn’t want them to be. Nico is about a student with asthma who can now run through the school hallways thanks to scientific innovation, and Chloe tells the story of a cancer survivor who gets a tattoo in commemoration of her cancer journey.
We filmed our incredible director, Reed Morano, who has a personal connection to our Chloe story. During the process of selecting a director for the films, we learned that Reed was drawn to our story about Chloe as she is also a cancer survivor and has a tattoo in honor of her journey. It was serendipitous to find someone so passionate about this work, and she was brave enough to share her own story on camera.
We took a digital-first approach through a new landing page and social content to showcase our Chloe and Nico stories and additional corporate videos and content. Through paid and organic social, we ensured these videos were being seen by our key audiences of engaged patients, HCPs, policymakers and investors. We have also recently set up CRM to capture sign-ups for future What science can do content.
Timed to Climate Week NYC, we showed up as thought leaders and activated surround sound ads for the campaign. We had a full-page ad featured in the Climate Forward edition of The New York Times, video ads on the mobile homepage of nytimes.com and audio ads within their own podcast, The Daily. Imagery featuring both Nico and Chloe were also displayed on-site at the New York Times building and throughout their Climate Forward events.
We’ve seen incredible results in just the first few months of our campaign, with more to come:
Audiences Seeking More: In this short amount of time, we’ve had 70K+ site visits, which is 1.7x higher than daily average visits to the Science and Innovation pages on our US website during a 90-day lookback window prior to our campaign launch.
Stories that Stop the Scroll: Our eye-catching and meaningful content resonates with our audiences and has generated 102M+ impressions and 16.6M+ video views across all channels, and these numbers are increasing each day!
Exemplary Media Partnership: A robust partnership with The New York Times put our stories front and center with a 270K+ print circulation, and a combined 18.9+ million impressions from our NYT Mobile Home Page Takeover and The Daily podcast integration.
In addition to the metrics above, we are currently fielding more research to understand the impact the campaign has had on our corporate reputation. But the most exciting part is that we’re just beginning! This multi-year program will continue to evolve as we develop new patient-focused stories related to additional disease areas and societal challenges that we are focused on every day.
