Monday, May 9, 2011
Case Study: AstraZeneca Hosts First Twitter Chat
For AstraZeneca, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, engaging in online social media requires careful footing and continuous regard for government regulation. As such, the American arm of the UK-based drug manufacturer has crafted its social participation around big-picture healthcare topics and, for the most part, is steering clear of specific mentions of prescription products.
The goals for the company’s social media program were two-fold: AstraZeneca wanted to raise awareness of its prescription assistance program, which helps needy patients afford their medications. Additionally, the company wanted to interact with patients, healthcare professionals and industry advocates about the best ways to promote AZ&Me.
“We wanted feedback on how to operate our prescription assistance programs more effectively and efficiently to serve patients,” said Katie Lubenow, AstraZeneca’s senior manager of external communications. In essence, the corporation wanted to crowdsource ideas for future marketing of AZ&ME.
Strategy:
AstraZeneca’s PR team promoted the scheduled Twitter chat through both @AstraZenecaUS and the company blog. The event soon caught the attention of pharma industry pundits and bloggers who retweeted and posted information about the chat. On the day of the #rxSave chat, tweets denoting the planned hashtag began to appear, creating buzz about the event. At exactly 8:00pm, Jen McGovern, AstraZeneca’s director of Patient Assistance Programs, greeted those following the hashtag and welcomed them to @AstraZenecaUS’ first ever Twitter chat.
At the beginning of the event, McGovern established that, given current regulations, she would not be able to discuss specific medications or diseases using Twitter’s 140 character limit. She did, however, tweet that if individuals had questions about specific products, they could contact AstraZeneca through its corporate website or through a telephone help line.
With disclaimers out of the way and ground rules set, McGovern—via @AstraZenecaUS—asked participants what they thought were the best ways to increase awareness of prescription savings programs. Close to 30 responses came in and McGovern probed a few follow-up questions. The participants, largely individuals in healthcare and pharma professions, suggested ideas such as healthcare social networks, front-line education and the use of patient and health advocates to spread the word.
Results:
During the time allotted to the live chat, there were nearly 400 tweets using the #rxSave hashtag. Even after the close of the event, tweeters continued to use the hashtag. And four days later, there were more than 1,000 tweets from more than 200 different people that used the hashtag. AstraZeneca also gained 73 Twitter followers the day of the chat—and this number has steadily increased.
Because a number of healthcare providers participated in the chat, the pharma company was able to ask questions and get answers about real-life actions and challenges to prescription savings program adoption. AstraZeneca was also able to ask about communicating with patients via text messages, and gleaned insight about reaching caregivers of seniors.
Despite an overwhelmingly positive response, AstraZeneca did face backlash from one persistent tweeter. The individual, making use of the #rxSave hashtag, posted tweets critical of AstraZeneca’s past legal affairs. Despite the individual’s unrelenting negativity, the conversation continued about #rxSave, with both the @AstraZenecaUS moderator and participants largely ignoring the person’s trolling.
On the heels of this first success, “AstraZeneca is open to conducting additional chats,” Lubenow said, “if there are topics that would be beneficial to discuss while staying within regulations.”
