SmartSocial Summit | We Still Really Just Want a Good Story: Engage Your Audience with Winning Content -- Abbvie
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AbbVie is a global biopharmaceutical company that strives to make a remarkable impact on patients' lives by discovering, developing, and delivering medicines for serious diseases. It also aims to be a responsible employer and give back to the communities it serves.
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SmartSocial Summit | We Still Really Just Want a Good Story: Engage Your Audience with Winning Content -- Abbvie
- 1. AbbVie is a global biopharmaceutical company • We strive to make a remarkable impact on patients’ lives. • We discover, develop and deliver medicines for serious diseases. • We’re a responsible employer and give back to our communities. Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 1
- 2. Copyright: State Farm (Flickr)
- 4. Who are we talking to? Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 4
- 5. Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 5
- 6. How do we reach them? Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 6
- 7. Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 7
- 8. Does the story educate, inform or inspire? Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 8
- 10. 38% say brands share interesting content on social. Don’t blow it. Title Here (Go Header & Footer to edit this text) 10
Editor's Notes
- (Introduce AbbVie) If you aren’t familiar with AbbVie, let me start with the 280 character description to provide context. AbbVie is a global biopharmaceutical company. We strive to make a remarkable impact on patients’ lives. We discover, develop and deliver medicines for serious diseases. And we are a responsible employer that gives back to our communities. With that as our mission, telling a good story should be really simple right?
- Not exactly. Pharma companies are very limited in what we can say and especially how we can use social media. Without boring you with legalese and here’s what you need to know… Pharma communications with the public are highly regulated Rules about what can be published on social vary by country (Fun fact: direct to consumer advertising is only allowed in the US and New Zealand) In general brand names and product claims are a no-go (but not always) Even telling our corporate story – especially on social media – can be a bit of a challenge.
- I like to refer to it as the Willy Wonka problem. You know the company’s name, but not what goes on inside. Like the chocolate factory, we’re the manufacturer with the non-descript building and the tall gates that you see from the highway. We need to give it a personality, a face and a purpose. And our oompa-loopas don’t make everlasting gobstoppers, they cure diseases and impact patients’ lives. There are a million stories waiting behind those gates, so, I’ll share the questions we ask to make sure we are telling the best ones so that we make positive connections with our audiences.
- The first rule of storytelling is to know your audience. Not just their demographics, but what makes them tick and what makes them click. Do we have a captive audience of smiling faces ready for story hour? Probably not. Our audiences are more likely to be scientists, investors, healthcare professionals, prospective employees, media and policy makers. Their work is serious and they are likely to be bombarded with information all the time. So our stories can have the technical information, but it needs to come to life with colorful storytelling that is evocative and emotive.
- Let me give you an example of how we tell stories at AbbVie. When we told the story of a new discovery in the treatment of blood cancer, it didn’t read like an article in a scientific journal. It brought to life the drama that goes on in the lab. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. And the incredible twenty year journey that led to this breakthrough. Here’s some of the language: Breaking the Rules of Science to Treat Cancer. Rebels with a cause. Cancer cells don’t die I don’t know about you, but I’m not thinking about guys in lab coats as I’m reading this. I’m picturing Tyler Durden in Cancer Fight Club. Rule #2: Some Targets Are Just “Undruggable” Rule #3: If You Don’t Have Equipment to Do Something, You Just Can’t Do It Rule #4: You Must Follow the Rule of Five Rule #5: If It Doesn’t Seem Likely, It’s Not Worth Trying
- Aside from telling a good story, over time, we’ve also gotten smarter about where we reach our audiences. We are more selective and thoughtful in how we reach them. We created a Social Channel Blueprint to use a decision making tool which has helped us be more consistent and conscious in the distribution of our content. The blueprint outlines the audience for each channel and equally important, the intent or purpose of each channel. We’ve also specified what content is a go, versus a stop or a maybe. It’s a wayfinding tool for content creators to ensure the stories they are telling fit the purpose of the channel and reach the intended audience. When you have about 200 pieces of content or micro-stories a month, being told to different people on different subjects and channels, you need that guiding light to bring a clear focus and consistency to our efforts and our voice.
- For example, we’ve only recently launched an Instagram channel for AbbVie. We didn’t want it to be another dumping ground for content. Instead we wanted to ensure we had a thoughtful approach to how we use it, what’s it’s for and equally important, what it’s not for. As it says in our profile: This global page celebrates our people, our work & how #AbbVieGivesBack. It’s not for product news or disease awareness posts. It’s to showcase our good works. So, what you’ll find are profiles of our people, stories of our scientists and highlights of the good work we do around the world with a range of non-profit partners. Absolutely no press releases allowed!
- I’ve talked about the who (the audience) and the how (our style and channels), but the what is at the heart of your story-telling. Early on when we first started our social media team and developed the beginnings of our strategy, we used this simple criteria for our content – does the story educate, inform or inspire. Now, you might be in a business where entertaining might make sense, but that doesn’t fit so well when you’re focused on curing serious diseases. We also knew that we didn’t want our content to be “announcements”. At the time, everything was an announcement. Let’s tweet that we’ll be at this event. Let’s post that it’s world psoriasis day. We said, if the content doesn’t educate, inform or inspire, then it won’t be published. Today, we still use this as a guide for all of our content decisions. And sometimes, as was the case with our recent $100 million donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities, our content was able to do all three. Educate on the mission of RMHC, Inform about how the funds would be used, and inspire through the sheer reaction and impact of this historic gift. Each is a small story – told in photos, infographics, GIFs – but does more than just announce the news.
- I’ll end with the money question. It’s the one have on the big whiteboard in my office – “Before posting on social ask…Is this worth knowing?” I don’t evaluate if it’s worth telling from the corporate perspective, because you’ll always have a colleague or a leader who insists we should be publishing this. But ask the question from the perspective of the audience. It’s a powerful question. With so much noise and information polluting the internet and our brains, it’s our responsibility as communicators and marketers to make sure that what we put out has value. One way to test this is to ask this simple question – is this worth knowing? If you can’t whole-heartedly say yes, then maybe rethink your story.
- So let’s not blow it my friends. 81% of consumers hate telemarketing calls. 70% hate pop up ads. 48% hate direct mail. Why? Because they are typically intrusive, poorly timed and not relevant. With social content and the stories we tell, we have the opportunity to change that. Let’s not give our social media audience a reason to mute us. Create content that helps, use data to understand and connect to your customer, and tell some really good stories. When we do, we’ll find that our audiences, like our kids at bedtime, will ask for more.