Digital Pharma: Diabetes video goes viral
pharmafile | November 16, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Diabetes Hands Foundation, Digital Pharma blog, Roche, diabetes, viral video, youtube
An online video encouraging diabetics to test their blood sugar levels has passed 117,000 views on YouTube in just over two weeks.
Released ahead of last Sunday’s World Diabetes Day, the Big Blue Test was produced by US patient group the Diabetes Hands Foundation, with production costs underwritten by pharma company Roche.
The pharma company further pledged to give up to $75,000 ($0.75 per view), and the milestone figure of 100,000 views was reached on World Diabetes Day itself.
The money raised will be used to help provide insulin and care for children in some of the world’s poorest countries, through the International Diabetes Federation’s Life for a Child programme and the Insulin for Life initiative.
Now in its second year, the Big Blue Test aims to persuade people with diabetes to measure their blood sugar levels, take 15 minutes of exercise and then test again to show how individual effort can make a difference.
Luc Vierstraete is senior vice president and general manager at Roche Diabetes Care North America, which markets the Accu-Chek range of blood glucose monitoring products.
He said the initiative underscored “Roche’s commitment to advocacy, awareness and education when it comes to diabetes”.
“We’re thankful to have such wonderful partners in the diabetes community and hope … [the] Big Blue Test video encourages others to get involved and make a difference in their communities.”
The Big Blue Test
A major part of the video’s successful promotion was the way the Diabetes Hands Foundation embedded it on other sites, which provided valuable help in getting it past the 100,000 views mark.
In this way it picked up over 10,000 from Facebook, 8,000 from the campaign’s own bigbluetest.org website and 4,500 from the diabetes communities TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes.
Facebook referrals drove another 7,000 views on YouTube itself, and traffic from Twitter contributed a further 3,000.
It also inspired eight ‘video responses’ on YouTube, but more importantly over 1,000 people at date have taken the Big Blue Test and uploaded their results at the Big Blue Test website.
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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