Describe any restrictions or regulations regarding Healthcare/RX/Pharma communications in your country/region including:

In Japan, intimidation tactics and reference of the drug in direct-to-consumer (DTC) communication is prohibited. Also, lack of visibility / data linking touchpoints in the patient journey is a struggle, with little to no data linking web traffic to clinic visits and rebound cases.

Describe the target audience and why your work is relevant to them.

Target audience (patients / potential patients) is based on actual user insights of pressure / motivational factors leading to smoking cessation; namely health concerns, financial impact and family. Both the visual and copy elements appeal to this struggle directly, by using characters personifying each.

Describe the creative idea

We developed an entirely new communication strategy and implemented new copy and creatives across all existing and several new touchpoints. Based on real user / patient insights, the new creative concept, in line with Pfizer’s mission, was designed to introduce smoking cessation clinics as an option to people struggling with their addiction as well as increase the number of successful smoking cessation patient cases. The tone of the language and visuals were made less promotional and intimidating than in the past, instead taking on a much more supportive tone, acknowledging the struggle and increased pressure, both from family / friends and society in general that people faced. In addition to the overlying media and web strategy that was implemented, a new LINE-based support chatbot was launched to support patients during smoking cessation treatment as well as creating an end to end communication that had not been possible before.

Describe the execution

The strategy’s execution consisted of overhauling the existing nation-wide media campaign, including how targeting was achieved and what data could be extracted from each channel. This resulted in the addition of several new channels and a more strategic way of defining the role / KPI of each. Where a more mass media “one message fits all” approach had previously been implemented, we created different messages for each persona, acknowledging the different pain points and motivations for quitting. For each persona, characters were developed to personify these pain points. They were abstract / friendly in tone, making them relatable to all ages / genders to combat the strong sense of isolation that we discovered smokers felt when trying to quit. We rolled these creatives out across all channels (static and video) with a new tag line and a distinct CTA, introducing a variety of ad copy variations that spoke directly to the real voices of people struggling with addiction that we had gathered. We quickly saw positive results, and as we started to consistently hit our KPI objectives, we began to explore new media channels and new targeting methods to expand our reach. Fast-paced media optimization enabled us to quickly identify underperforming channels as well as potential opportunities to maximize media effectiveness. We also overhauled the TOP page (campaign landing page), identifying high conversion rate content for each persona and re-housing them on the TOP page (previously on the 2nd or 3rd layer of the site), improving conversions as well as SEO ranking. In addition to the media campaign, we launched a LINE-based support tool for patients, replacing the paper smoking cessation diary that was issued by doctors. The LINE-based app enabled Pfizer to actively support patients after initial conversion (clinic search/visit) and during treatment.