Stephen Fanuele
Worldwide Multi-Channel Hub, Associate Director, Patient Engagement
Bristol Myers Squibb
Taking Social Live
The Amazing Race but with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and a digital spin? That is just one of the many cool ideas that has come from Stephen Fanuele and his team within BMS’s Digital Hub.
Orencia was already one of the first brands at BMS to have a social presence, but they wanted to take things to a new level. They decided to do the first-ever Facebook Live event at BMS. After a successful first year, they did it again in 2019 with Orencia Live: The Hunt for Answers. It was modeled similarly to The Amazing Race with three teams of real RA patients participating in various challenges—just without the globe-hopping. But there were still confessionals with each team providing commentary on the challenges, an actor-host who explained each challenge to the audience, and even fan interaction with live-polls of the audience voting on what they expected to happen. And each challenge provided a metaphor for the RA experience and tied into a whole story that was woven into the game to help the players and the audience to understand the importance of blood testing, biomarkers, and having conversations with your doctor.
The event was broadcast on Orencia.com as well as the brand’s Facebook page and received 93,000 unique views at the time of broadcast. And from the first to second year, viewership pretty much doubled with time onsite going from seven minutes to 12 minutes.
Innovation like this is nothing new for Stephen. Earlier in his career at BMS, he introduced the first exam room point of care program for an older HIV brand. The patient campaign utilized geo-targeting by mapping the highest rates of HIV infection across the country and overlaying where BMS’ customer base of doctors was located. That way the team could ensure the digital point of care units were available in exam rooms and waiting rooms of doctors that the sales team would also be in touch with—meaning the company would be doubling its efforts by reaching both audiences in the same location. The patient campaign featured real HIV patients, including the first transgender person BMS used in any of its promotional materials.
