SHADOW

TitleSHADOW
BrandJANSSEN
Product/ServiceMDD
Category F01. Regulated
Entrant HAVAS LYNX Manchester, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation HAVAS LYNX Manchester, UNITED KINGDOM
Production HAVAS LYNX Manchester, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Paul Kinsella Havas Lynx Group Creative Director
Matt Crosby Havas Lynx Group Senior Creative
Richard Hague Havas Lynx Group Copywriter
Lorna Kempley Havas Lynx Group Account Director

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

Because of strict guidelines, we couldn’t say that something new was coming, so we had to tell the audience to look at MDD in a different way.

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

This multichannel campaign was based on patient and HCP research and insights into unmet needs. Research told us that due to contradictory guidelines on how best to treat MDD, clinicians are frequently unsure about how best to deal with patients who are unresponsive to treatment.

Background

Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects approx. 40.3 million people across Europe, and it is the leading cause of disability worldwide. In 2004, depression cost Europe approximately €118 billion, which corresponded to 1% of the total economy. The current standard of care is SSRIs/SNRIs, but these oral treatments have a slow onset of efficacy (3-8 weeks), and up to 1/3 of patients do not achieve complete remission. Despite this, treatment has changed very little in 30 years, leading to resigned acceptance of suboptimal outcomes, which means patients’ suffering often continues longer than it should. Our task was to encourage clinicians to recognise treatment failure sooner, and to act earlier in order to help their patients finally achieve remission. By communicating a consistent disease awareness narrative, we aim to redefine expectations in MDD and begin to restore hope for both patients and HCPs.

Describe the creative idea

Throughout research, many MDD patients described how they had become ‘a shadow of their former selves’. It’s this insight that we brought to life in both film and still images. For press and online, we communicated this sense of isolation by turning the person suffering from MDD into a solid, black shadow, with their reflections becoming their ‘former self’. The desaturated photography style was intentionally light, airy and inviting, to contrast with the stereotypical dark, morbid visual style usually used when talking about depression. For the film, we wanted to show how the shadow of depression engulfs a patient over a period of time. And how it leaves them isolated from the world around them, even in their own home.

Describe the execution

The campaign launched at an EMEA level across multiple channels, with a central online hub of the Janssen Medical Cloud. To ensure maximum reach and impact, we worked with partners including Medscape, M3, BMJ, Elsevier, NEJM and ASPC, targeting the places in which our audience are known to be active in order to ensure maximum reach. Content is disseminated via digital channels – banners, emailers, alerts – driving traffic back to the central hub for more information. Printed ads have been included in journals across EU5. A media plan throughout 2019 involves ramping up of activities around key events and congresses such as EPA, ECNP and World Mental Health Day, with additional activities as we broaden our audiences (see below).

Describe the strategy

This multichannel campaign was based on patient and HCP research and insights into unmet needs. Research told us that due to contradictory guidelines on how best to treat MDD, clinicians are frequently unsure about how best to deal with patients who are unresponsive to treatment. With new treatments on the horizon, we recognised that for patients to benefit there is first a need to change current management of MDD; to acknowledge inadequate response to treatment sooner in order to improve response and remission rates – bringing the problem into sharper focus so as to restore hope and help patients sooner. Psychiatrists were identified as key decision makers with the most significant potential to influence the existing status quo in MDD management, with a plan to broaden our audience in a phased manner as the campaign begins to show impact, extending first to nurse education and activities and then to GPs.

List the results

KPIs were set across three categories – engagement with the JMC campaign hub (traffic volume and engagement), media partner activity (reach and referral) and local market engagement. Now at two months post launch, campaign reach is at 169,000 impressions across a psychiatry specialist audience in EU5, with average time on the hub over 2 x our target at 2.5 minutes. Currently 24% of users are completing a goal, 6 x greater than our target benchmark. We have additionally already delivered 62% of our yearly target for brand alert views. With local markets in the process of localising the campaign, we hope to see continued increase in Janssen’s SoV in MDD over the coming months.