Digital Pharma: Pfizer UK’s online surgery (case study)
pharmafile | January 24, 2011 | Feature | Medical Communications | Digital Pharma blog, Facebook advertising, Google Adwords, ManMOT, PR, Pfizer, Twitter, blogs, male health
Pfizer UK’s online male health clinic Man MOT was launched last summer to offer men confidential advice and information about any health problem.
It’s the UK’s first online health surgery for men and opens for consultations every Monday from 6pm – 11pm. Initially run as a four-month pilot, the initiative is currently set to continue until May.
Pfizer spoke exclusively to InPharm’s Digital Pharma blog about Man MOT’s progress, collaborating with the NHS, the site’s online traffic sources and the importance of offline – well as online – media.
The company’s UK communications manager Charlotte Binstead started by noting the project is going so well it has been hailed within Pfizer as an example of best practice.
To date Man MOT has received a total of 21,000 visits and sources for this web traffic include print coverage, an informal partnership with the NHS, Facebook advertising, blog partnerships and Twitter.
The most important of these sources is a print piece about the site that subsequently appeared online in August 2010, and that single article in The Guardian leads Man MOT’s top five traffic sources:
• Guardian.co.uk
• NHS Choices (nhs.co.uk)
• Facebook (advertising)
• Anorak blog
Coming in at number four in the list is the Anorak blog, with which Pfizer worked on some sponsored posts after spending some time identifying blogs with a high proportion of male readers.
Pfizer UK’s first Twitter account
The Man MOT campaign was the first time Pfizer used Twitter (@ManMOTUK) in the UK, though Charlotte acknowledges they took – and will continue to take – quite a cautious approach.
“Originally we had just a few approved tweets – because everything that we put out has to be approved by our medical and legal team.
“Then we realised we would start running out of tweets and needed to think a bit more widely about how we worked with Twitter. We haven’t mastered that just yet, but we’re working with our legal and medical teams on how we can better engage with it.”
Viral video, Google Adwords and Facebook advertising
In November the campaign entered a second phase with a re-launch of sorts. It’s four-month pilot phase having been judged a success by the company, Pfizer released the Don’t Be A Wilbert video through its YouTube channel to maintain momentum.
Based around a fictional ‘Ministry of Manly Behaviour’, the ‘Wilbert’ campaign draws inspiration from Mr Cholmondley-Warner, a UK television character that parodied 1940/50s black-and-white public information films.
The video aims to discredit the term ‘man flu’, which it says is used to ridicule men when they are sick and may be stopping them from seeking help for legitimate conditions.
Don’t Be A Wilbert has received nearly 35,000 YouTube views to date and Pfizer told Digital Pharma that 71% of these have been from men, mostly aged 45-54 and that the video has a 85% approval rating from viewers.
The Wilbert video is some way behind the numbers achieved by Pfizer UK’s own Get Real, Get A Prescription video, which has had176,000 viewings, but it’s still way ahead of most pharma videos on YouTube, views of which tend to languish under the 1,000 mark.
In addition to producing the video, the November re-launch also saw Pfizer change their promotional strategy, adding Google Adwords and Facebook advertising into the mix in order to keep up momentum. The Facebook advertising has been particularly effective, proving to be the third most important source of traffic to Man MOT.
Offline coverage in the print press
Although it’s an online initiative, Charlotte said it was necessary to support it through more traditional (offline) communications means.
“We still think it’s really important to marry up the work we’re doing online with some traditional media outreach,” Charlotte explained, adding that Pfizer had also worked on radio coverage with TalkSport and other stations.
Pfizer has so far received 41 pieces of coverage, including 23 print and online items from the national press; 15 broadcast pieces; three regional articles and three lifestyle print articles.
It worked closely with the News Of The World on the project – the newspaper’s agony aunt Tracey Cox holds a monthly surgery on Man MOT, focusing on sexual confidence – but it’s the single ‘mystery shopper’ article produced by The Guardian that’s been more important to its success.
“We had a lot of people come through from the News Of The World, who we worked with at the beginning, but that interest hasn’t maintained,” says Charlotte. “The Guardian continues to drive people now.”
Pfizer’s health messages and NHS partnership
Looking at the tweets from Pfizer’s @ManMOTUK Twitter account as a shortcut to analysing the campaign’s key messages, sexual health and relationship issues were mentioned the most. These were followed, in descending order of volume, by tweets about general health issues (such as increasing your fruit and vegetable consumption), diabetes, prostate problems and heart disease.
Pfizer’s products of course include the blockbuster erectile dysfunction treatment Viagra and cholesterol drug Lipitor, whose indications include one for the primary prevention of cardiovascular events in type II diabetes.
But more tweets were sent exhorting men to visit a GP – either their own local doctor or one of those at ManMOT – than for any single therapy area.
Charlotte said: “Pfizer has a keen interest in programmes that seek to improve men’s health for several reasons, not least because men are less likely than women to visit a GP. This can often mean that men aren’t having their problems diagnosed by a doctor, which could result in serious medical conditions not being detected or treated.
Man MOT “has proven to be a successful tool in encouraging men to start thinking more about their health and helping them to build confidence when it comes to seeking expert advice,” she added.
The Pfizer-funded site is supported by a number patient groups, among them Diabetes UK, Relate, the National Obesity Forum and Heart UK. Pfizer is also working, on an informal basis, with the NHS.
The health service’s official website NHS Choices links to Man MOT, and is the its second highest referrer of traffic, while NHS Direct has tweeted about the site.
This partnership came about after the NHS approached Pfizer after seeing the site and asked if they could link up with it, Charlotte explained.
“Both NHS Choices and NHS Direct really just endorse and support our project. NHS Choices has links to Man MOT from their information pages and they’ve been quite targeted on that, so anything on their information pages that’s related to men’s health includes a link to Man MOT.
“We also met with NHS Direct and have a contract with them to include their symptom checker on the site, so that people have this alternative route if they land on the site on any day other than a Monday.”
Man MOT consultations
Man MOT’s doctors and advisors conduct their consultations via an instant messenger online chat tool and during the site’s Monday evening surgery hours a chat box flashes when a GP is available to talk.
So far Man MOT has hosted 443 live consultations on the back of 21,000 visits to the site, making a 2% ‘conversion rate’, but Pfizer says that when the visits are isolated to just those on a Monday the rate rises to 5%.
The company adds that the majority of consultations lasted over 15 minutes – twice the length of the average real life GP appointment.
Man MOT is due to run until May and, having already had its term extended once, Pfizer is currently considering whether to keep it going past this date.
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
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