
Social Media Marketing Case Study: “Off to A Good Start” Campaign by Eli Lilly

Eli Lilly - a reputable US pharmaceutical company with a long history of more than 140 years, achieved enormous success with their social media campaign called “Off to A Good Start”. The campaign was aimed to empower and educate people with diabetes by using the right resources.
The challenge
In the US, it was estimated that there were around 34.2 million people living with diabetes. Moreover, a large percentage of these individuals have discontinued treatment between the first and second treatments. Thus, Eli Lilly has noticed the importance of educational content which is simple and understandable so that diabetes patients and their caregivers can easily digest and be well-aware of their state, then seek appropriate treatment.
Strategy & Execution
Teaming up with TrendyMinds - an audience-focused marketing agency in the US, Eli Lilly came up with a comprehensive digital advertising campaign. In this campaign, Eli Lilly directly communicated with millions of people having diabetes via educational animated videos featuring diabetes-related topics such as blood sugar balance, blood sugar levels, progresses of disease state, available treatment options, etc.
The campaign videos, consisting of hand-drawn and character-driven animations, helped maximize audience engagement and learning outcomes. The videos were expected to empower patients to get into knowledgeable and meaningful conversations with healthcare providers.
Eli Lilly and the agency recognised the huge advantages of Facebook advertising such as:
A huge number of active daily users of 250 million within the U.S
Immersive and engaging mobile-friendly advertisements
A variety of Facebook groups for the Diabetes Online Community
Unique and metric-based audience targeting
AI-powered predictive creative analysis facilitating the testing of new content.
Thus, the campaign was taking advantage of Facebook advertising to reach a target audience, identified as people dealing with Type 2 diabetes and their caregivers.
In addition to the English version of the animations, Eli Lilly developed another Spanish-first version with a view to accessing 6.4 million Hispanic Americans living with diabetes.
The results
The “Off to A Good Start” campaign produced impressive success, revealed in statistics such as:
35 million people reached
350 million impressions
93 million video views
Double average watch time compared to Facebook's average for video ads
96% average positive sentiment
The campaign was also honoured with an award for Social Media for Consumer category at the 2020 Fierce Pharma Marketing Awards.
References:
trendyminds.com
fiercepharma.com
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Vietnam Social Health Revolution - VSHR Digital Media