Social Media is in Our Genes: How Ocrevus Developed a Successful Awareness Campaign on Facebook and YouTube

Ocrevus is a biologic therapy for patients suffering from Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis (RMS) and Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (PPMS). Approved by the FDA last year, the therapy has helped more than 70,000 patients in the United States alone (Genentech, Inc.,  Being on OCREVUS 2018). The Multiple Sclerosis (MS) community is comprised of more than 2.3 million people around the world, many of which actively participate in online message boards, groups, and chat rooms (Weatherspoon, 2017). With these channels, people living with MS form community, build bonds, and learn more about the disease, treatment options, and lifestyle support.

Fig. 1: Ocrevus Branded Facebook Page (OCREVUS, 2018)

Branded Facebook Page: Objectives

The Ocrevus Product Marketing team at Genentech chose Facebook as the initial platform to develop a presence and community. A number of reasons contributed to this decision, including the segmentation available through Facebook, existing presence of a strong and active MS community, and opportunity to develop advertising campaigns alongside profile pages. Through social media, Genentech has the opportunity to position Ocrevus as an MS therapy option by emphasizing product information and clinical engagement, while touching on the core campaign promise (“Have fewer maybes”) through lifestyle and inspirational content. This approach highlights Ocrevus product benefits while differentiating from other MS content providers in the social space. The primary branded Facebook page (see Fig. 1) for Ocrevus was developed with the goal of reaffirming that Ocrevus is accessible, reliable, and a partner supporting patients and caregivers while they navigate the treatment and management of MS.

Fig. 2: MSVoice (unbranded) Facebook Page (MSVoice, 2018)

The branded Facebook page and campaign built upon the success of an unbranded Facebook page called MSVoice (Fig, 2), which was designed solely as a community of support of MS caregivers and patients, without discussions of specific medications. The heart of the unbranded page was on telling stories and relating to other patients and caregivers with MS. By telling a personal story, you can help shed light on a condition’s symptoms, prognosis, and other details for those still searching for the correct diagnosis and help to raise awareness (Global Genes, 2016). The unbranded campaign provided an outlet for patients to share their stories of living with MS, which in turn provided qualitative feedback to the Ocrevus Product Marketing team as to what content would be most valuable to prospective Ocrevus patients - understanding their needs, questions, and fears around MS. Upon launching the branded Facebook page and concurrent advertising campaign, the marketing team could leverage existing data on follows and likes to the unbranded page to help segment the branded audience.  

Fig. 3: Ocrevus Branded Facebook Posts (OCREVUS, 2018)

Unbranded Facebook Page: Using Audience Insights to Inform Branded Facebook Content

The robust reporting features of Facebook provided the Ocrevus Product Marketing team with data on MSVoice Facebook page interactions and segmentation to help promote the branded Facebook page to a targeted audience. Leveraging Audience Insights in the Facebook reporting platform, the marketing team learned more about the MSVoice target audience. It aggregated attributes about the patients and caregivers, such as interests and behaviors—which could then be used to find new audiences who may be interested in the branded content upon launch (Facebook, Choose your audience 2018). Facebook Audience Insights provides aggregate information about two groups of people—people connected to our Page and people on Facebook—so we could create content that resonates and easily find more people like the ones in our current audience. This data helped to develop a target audience for the Ocrevus Branded Facebook page, as well as inform content for the page moving forward. Ads were also developed on Facebook to drive directly to ocrevus.com, based upon the same Facebook Audience Insights and interactions with the branded page. A lookalike audience was developed to help increase awareness of the brand beyond the existing followers.

Considerations: Regulatory and the Pharma Space

Outside of opportunities for community-building and disease awareness, segmentation and audience insights, the decision to leverage Facebook as the primary channel was also based upon challenges faced by marketers in the highly-regulated pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical companies face a lot of challenges on social media, such as how to handle incomplete and misinformation about their products… According to the FDA Guidance, when you use social media, you need to include the “good, bad and the ugly” about your product --- social media posts need to be fair and balanced (Belbey, 2017). For the Genentech Regulatory team to even consider unbranded or branded social media accounts, the Product Marketing team had to ensure that any mention of the product included a fair and balance approach to content - this means the therapy’s benefits as well as safety and side-effect information. This is still difficult to contain on social media, as opposed to static branded websites. One way to control the message is to create what the industry calls a “controlled environment” such as creating a company webpage for a drug or disease; in this way, firms can make sure information is accurate and complete, and keeps a brand in line with the FDA (Belbey, 2017). For Genentech, detailed social media guidelines were developed in tandem with the Ocrevus Facebook campaign, as it was the first of it’s kind for the the company and guidelines were required to help navigate strict direction from the FDA on product marketing to patients. For example, if a claim, disease state, or brand name is mentioned in a post, it must include an Important Safety Information (ISI) link and short safety message in a Facebook post description (Genentech, Social Media Guidelines 2018). Due to character limits in Twitter, that platform was discouraged from being included in marketing campaign development. Facebook offered the platform and audience segmentation required to reach the right constituents with curated content, while serving as the company’s first exploration of social media, paving the way for other brands in the Genentech portfolio.

Another consideration is the nature of regulated content for marketing. All materials - whether it be website content, metadata, emails, brochures, and postcards must all be routed through a complex regulatory system at Genentech and through to the FDA. Because of this, the Ocrevus Product Marketing team also developed a complex list of sample responses for the branded Facebook page to be used as responses to patient comments and questions. Every word, URL, and image was routed in advance through the Promotional Review Committee in order to ensure all posts contained fair balance, safety and ISI messaging, as well as a range of commentary to meet the immediate needs of patients. Development of these messages (Fig. 3) was based upon learned data from Facebook Audience Insights, a robust social listening campaign, and more than a year of data from observing the unbranded Facebook page, MSVoice. The Facebook platform also provided creative options for displaying required black box warnings and Important Safety Information in a scrolling video, something unable to accomplish with Twitter.

YouTube Integration

Connecting with patients and caregivers is the heart of the Ocrevus marketing strategy. The second channel for the brand to pursue was YouTube, as a way to integrate patient stories and testimonials in video format with other digital content. A branded YouTube page was developed with commenting turned off, in order to avoid adverse event (AE) reporting requirements for the FDA. Facebook posts then pointed directly to the branded YouTube channel to integrate both platforms with a common message (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Ocrevus Branded Facebook Post Drives to Branded YouTube Channel (OCREVUS, 2018)

The branded YouTube page (Fig. 5) faced the same challenges with ensuring fair balance and inclusion of ISI and safety. The header of the page includes a floating ISI, which is also appended to the end of each uploaded video. Each piece of content was reviewed and approved by the Promotional Review Committee, including video content, appended ISI, video title, and metadata tags on the YouTube channel.

Measurement

For measurement, the Product Marketing team reviewed video starts and completes, video shares, click-throughs to CTA buttons on videos, Facebook post likes, shares, and comments, and likes or follows to the branded Facebook page. This information was consolidated and assessed weekly to help develop new content and make decisions around budget allocations with social channels and other digital tactics. All data was presented in a dashboard built by a media agency partner, in addition to regular reports from Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics to track traffic to the ocrevus.com website. Tracking codes helped to define the pathway by which social media followers connect to the branded website and go on to achieve a KPI such as form sign-up or Doctor Discussion Guide download. Facebook pixels were also placed on ocrevus.com to track all social media activities that lead a patient or caregiver to the branded site. This data helps the marketing team understand how content on social media affects key valued actions on the website which lead to conversions.

Fig. 5: Ocrevus Branded YouTube Channel (Genentech, OCREVUS® (ocrelizumab) YouTube 2018)

Marketing Resources

The primary goal of the Ocrevus Product Marketing Team was to drive engagement with patients and caregivers while raising awareness of of Ocrevus as a first-line therapy for Multiple Sclerosis. The integrated Facebook and YouTube campaigns achieved this (and still do) by marrying the intrinsic needs of patients to develop and connect to an inclusive community, ask questions, get answers, and learn about their condition and viable treatments. YouTube achieved this by sharing real patient stories and interviews to unravel the complexity of switching to Ocrevus and that first infusion experience. Social listening provided insight to the content needed for this channel, as did the development of the unbranded campaign, MSVoice, on Facebook. In turn, the YouTube channel also served as a marketing tool by utilizing the channel’s on-board analytics features, link tracking, and use of metadata for video content to generate organic traffic to the page. The branded Facebook page took this campaign a step further by leveraging video content and qualitative data on the interests and needs of patients to develop posts and thoughtful responses to continue to build the Ocrevus brand and increase awareness in a competitive therapeutic field. These channels both achieved the objective of the brand, while also ensuring compliance with FDA regulations concerning promotional materials.

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References

Belbey, J. (2017, May 25). Big Pharma And Social Media: How To Avoid Trouble With The FDA. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannabelbey/2017/05/25/big-pharma-and-social-media-how-to-avoid-trouble-with-the-fda/#b63ca31330b5

Genentech. (2018). OCREVUS® (ocrelizumab) YouTube. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from http://www.youtube.com/ocrevus

Genentech. (2018, July 13). Social Media Guidelines [Corporate Documentation]. South San Francisco, California.

Global Genes. (2016, February 10). How to promote your rare disease story through social media. Retrieved October 27, 2018, from https://globalgenes.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/GG_toolkit_social-media-storytelling_021016_WEB.pdf

MSVoice. (2018). MS Voice. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/mymsvoice/

OCREVUS. (2018). OCREVUS® (ocrelizumab). Retrieved October 27, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/ocrevus/