Patterns of content consumption on digital build more engagement: Dr Vikas Gupta

Cipla is back with its patient awareness initiative, #InhalersHainSahi, which aims at helping asthmatic patients live unstoppable lives with inhalers. The initiative focuses on creating awareness about asthma and the inherent role of inhalers in managing the disease through education.

With the success of the previous campaign, there has been an ad recall of 52% and consideration of inhalers has gone up by 6%. The fourth chapter of #BerokZindagi continues to convey the core message that ‘Asthma ke liye Inhalers Hain Sahi’ (inhalers are right for asthma) for building awareness and educating everyone about asthma and its right treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcvF_GCw4Aw

The campaign has been conceptualised by GREY Group India Agency and the TVC has been scripted by Juneston Mathana, directed by Prashant Madan and produced by Paper Planes Pictures. The campaign has been amplified on different digital and traditional media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Radio.

Speaking on the campaign, Juneston Mathana, Grey Group India, said, “We live in a society where everyone seems to have an opinion on matters, especially when it is concerned with the health and wellbeing of others. The film captures this behaviour and tackles the misconception and social stigma attached with asthmatics and their inhalers. #InhalersHainSahin drives home a very important and reassuring message, to young patients and most importantly, their parents. Listen only to your doctor and don’t get influenced by people’s opinions.”

According to the Global Burden of Disease Report, “In India, around 93 million people suffer from chronic respiratory diseases; of which around 37 million are asthmatics. India contributes to merely 11.1% of the global asthma burden, however, it accounts for over 42% of all global asthma deaths, making it the asthma death capital of the world.”

In conversation with Adgully, Dr Vikas Gupta, Rx India Business Head, Cipla Ltd, shares insights on the #InhalersHainSahi campaign, choosing a digital-first approach, along with celebrity engagement, real-time optimization and more.

What is the objective of the campaign?

At Cipla, we are guided by our purpose of ‘Caring for Life’, keeping patients at the core of everything we do. Our endeavour is to go beyond the pill and help patients lead healthier lives. #InhalersHainSahi campaign resonates with this very ethos of ours. This public awareness campaign is a continuous effort to address the stigma associated with asthma and its right treatment. The core objectives are based on three pillars:

To create awareness on asthma & Inhalers as an available treatment option
To increase the adoption of inhalers by busting the myths
Drive social acceptance for inhalers by addressing social stigma through education.

This campaign is our effort to normalise the word asthma and the use of inhalers in public. The biggest thing that we can achieve through this campaign is to make not only asthma patients in India understand their condition, but educate non- asthmatics as well.

What was the creative brief given to the agency?

Addressing stigma is crucial in achieving acceptance towards asthma. The insights we have clearly pointed out that sufferers (asthmatic) face barriers in day to day life. These barriers can be in form of stigma labelled by society or myths due to low awareness about the condition. The power lies in the correct information. Our brief was to address these issues and empower the audience with the correct knowledge, encouraging them to break all the barriers. The campaign’s brief was rooted somewhere in our belief that every person should get a chance at the best treatment, and for that, they first need to be aware of it.

The attempt is to bring an attitudinal and behavioural change with our pro-patient approach for our #InhalersHainSahi campaign.

What kind of traction did you get for the previous campaign? What was the consumers’ response to the same?

Our campaign has received a great response. It was encouraging to have support from not only the doctor fraternity, but patients and the general public as well. #InhalersHainSahi campaign has been instrumental in changing the perception towards asthma and inhalers. The campaign demonstrated a positive impact on both awareness and acceptance of inhalers. The awareness levels for inhalers improved by 10% and consideration for inhalers saw an uptick of 5%. However, we strongly believe that our work does not end here. The campaign has helped kickstart a social conversation to address the stigma and misconceptions associated with asthma and inhaler. These initial results give us the confidence to continue this path of creating awareness amongst the masses.

How are you promoting this campaign with your audience, and what’s been your engagement strategy with your targeted audience?

Our campaign has featured some of the prominent celebrities who drove the conversation to improve awareness about asthma and the use of inhalers in public. When celebrities associate themselves with patient awareness campaigns like #InhalersHainSahi, it reinforces the cause and brings about a tangible change in people’s response to asthma by encouraging them to publicly speak about their condition just like our ambassador did. The campaign began with Priyanka Chopra, who narrated her success story besides being asthmatic. Later on, we made a deliberate attempt to carry forward the message by launching a digital piece for #InhalersHaiSahi, with a discussion on facts and myths about asthma, led by a non-asthmatic celebrities like Radhika Apte and Aayushman Khurrana. The idea was to take the initiative to discuss asthma as an everyman representative. a non-asthmatic celebrity symbolises every individual who does not suffer from the disease, but is concerned for those who do.

Along with the celebrity engagement, we choose the digital-first approach. We understand the power of social media and this has been a major part of our all campaigns. Measuring the impact on a digital platform is more precise and, in several formats, we have the option of real-time optimisation. Here, geo-targeting is more systematic and since patterns of content consumption on digital build more engagement, garnering an understanding of responses from the people is also easier on digital.