It’s always a challenge to communicate the promise of early biomedical research. But tie in a hot trending consumer topic as a research tool, and media interest starts to stir. Add to that a touching real-life couple as clinical study participants, a major corporate partner and a leading PR agency partner with some well-executed media savvy, and you’re on your way to putting together a stand-out campaign. Such was the strategy and execution of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), which partnered with Intel Corporation to launch an initiative harnessing the power of big data to measure Parkinson’s disease symptoms and progression—and the news captivated media around the world, leading to enormous coverage and earning the Foundation, Intel and agency leader Ruder Finn a pair of Bronze awards in two different Bulldog Awards programs. The campaign won recognition in Bulldog’s 2015 Media Relations Awards, as well as in the 2015 Not-For-Profit PR Awards.
The Challenge: Take research initiatives to major media—and national and global audiences. In the summer of 2014, MJFF, the world’s largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research, and Intel, a global leader in computing innovation, launched a collaboration around data science approaches to Parkinson’s research. The partners are working to develop analytics algorithms and a platform to store large volumes of data (collected via wearable computing devices such as wristbands and smartphones) and make it accessible to researchers worldwide to glean insights and detect patterns in the data via independent studies. Collecting and analyzing this vast, consistent and objective pool of data in real time would inform researchers’ understanding of the disease, open new avenues of scientific inquiry, and enhance drug development design.
MJFF and Intel engaged Ruder Finn (RF) and North of Nine Communications (Nof9) as strategic partners to shape and execute a high-impact, multi-phase communications campaign for the announcement, which resulted in surround-sound media coverage that reached key health, technology and consumer audiences. The partners also leveraged the announcement to broadly call for participation in research, a key objective for MJFF, through its online trial match tool, Fox Trial Finder.
Strategy & Execution: The campaign team’s challenge was to devise a communications strategy that would best seize the moment of the announcement to 1) highlight the collaboration between MJFF and Intel as thought leaders and innovators, and 2) demonstrate the real-world impact and potential of big data technologies to further research and improve patient outcomes. The team set out to position the relevance of this collaboration to the broadest swath of the public possible—patients, caregivers, scientists, researchers, tech gurus and general consumers—through communications tactics that would resonate with each, including:
Thoughtful messaging on the intersection of science and technology: Crystallizing compelling and concise messaging around the functionality and impact of the work was critical, and all partners liaised extensively with one another to share perspectives and develop cohesive key messages.
Bringing the story to life with spokespeople: MJFF identified a patient and study participant and his loved one from its network to act as spokespersons: Bret Parker and his wife Katharine. They brought the patient story to life by showing the day-to-day impact of living with Parkinson’s and the need for better measures.
Internal keynote speech to rally Intel: Before announcing to the public, Intel hosted an internal summit for over 4,000 Intel employees to learn more about the collaboration. MJFF, Intel and the agency partners worked together to develop a fully integrated presentation from MJFF unveiling the joint initiative.
Explainer video to get key facts out: MJFF and Intel created an explainer video to share the details of the collaboration.
Press event: All partners coordinated a press event and live webcast to deliver the announcement to a global audience, and shared a media alert to invite targeted health, tech and consumer outlets to watch the webcast.
Exclusive story to break the news: To break the story to the national consumer audience, we offered one embargoed exclusive opportunity, including the only interview with Michael J. Fox, to Karen Weintraub, freelance health reporter for USA Today, leveraging MJFF’s existing relationship with Weintraub to focus on the potential impact on Parkinson’s research efforts and targeting a top US outlet that spans all key audiences.
Broad media efforts: In conjunction with the press event, RF and Nof9 reached out to health, tech and consumer reporters to share the joint press release and offer interviews on the announcement.
The Results: Massive media saturation, driving visibility and highly coveted engagement for the Foundation. The campaign generated enormous worldwide coverage, spurred by one key placement that kicked off a bevy of media interest.
“The USA Today exclusive led to a cascade of more than 75 original articles in top-tier and top tech outlets, reaching a total audience of over 652 million,” said Rachel Spielman, executive vice president of Corporate Communications at Ruder Finn.
The national U.S. outlet reaches key business and consumer audiences, and the exclusive story went to its online audience of 26.7 million unique monthly visitors and reached an additional 2.88 million readers when it ran in print the following day. The USA Today story ignited broad social media conversation and helped garner share of voice for MJFF as part of this important announcement.
Original articles ran in outlets including Forbes, Wall Street Journal, BBC News, Reuters, NBC News, Bloomberg TV, Yahoo! and Agence France Presse, as well as top tech outlets including Wired, Mashable, Information Week and CNET, reaching a combined audience of 652,960,733, including pickup. The explainer video was picked up in 16 original stories, including in Forbes, Mashable and Information Week.
“The media campaign and resulting coverage of MJFF and Intel’s collaboration met and exceeded the partners’ goals,” Spielman added. “The reporting raised awareness of the collaboration and the game-changing possibilities of technology-enabled solutions in Parkinson’s research.”
The campaign also activated the Parkinson’s community and drove patients to take meaningful action. MJFF realized a staggering impact on one of its driving objectives: increasing interest in clinical research participation. The week after the announcement, MJFF’s online study match tool, Fox Trial Finder, saw a 390% spike in registrations compared to expected activity in a similar timeframe. The announcement influenced behavior by crystallizing the message that clinical research participation can be pretty darn cool. It provided a concrete example of “21st-century research progress” with a relevant and appealing call to action, and compelled a highly valued and hard-to-reach target audience to get involved in helping speed the race to a Parkinson’s cure.
Richard Carufel