A Pandemic Forces A Global Pharmaceutical Company to Step Out of Their Comfort Zone Into the Digital Realm
Participating in an annual US event for allergy and immunology professionals each year was a key component for a global Pharmaceutical company’s marketing strategy. Having attended for years, countless hours of planning and logistics had already taken place in preparation for the annual AAAAI Association Meeting in Philadelphia, which included a very important Advisory Board event scheduled during the conference. One week before the conference was to take place, many companies implemented strict travel restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 which resulted in cancelled airline tickets, hotel reservations, and empty conference seats. Many of the sponsors, physicians, and key opinion leaders (KOLs) who planned to participate in the advisory board were already on-site and had no idea how to proceed. Should they head home immediately or was there a contingency plan in place? The company was at a crossroads. With so much time and effort already invested, a last-minute cancellation would significantly set back this large-scale peer-to-peer initiative if a solution could not be found, and soon. “We had been planning for this traditional in-person advisory board for months. Everything was done and ready to go when COVID-19 complicated the situation literally overnight,” said the Senior Program Director. “When the entire conference was cancelled, we had to move fast to either cancel all of our plans or try something virtual. We went with the latter.”
The company’s brand team engaged Vision2Voice Healthcare Communications to quickly create and execute a plan to convert this vital association advisory board meeting into a virtual event. The brand team was initially hesitant, as they had never done a virtual ad board before. Their new timeline left only four business days to work with before the event would take place. They had concerns about successfully recreating the experience of a live advisory board, in which participants traditionally sit around a U-shaped table and interact face-to-face. Vision2Voice quickly put the brand team at ease, reassuring them with decades of experience hosting and facilitating virtual programs in a way that fosters engagement and interaction.
Making the Impossible, Possible.
In a perfect world, the average virtual program is put together over the course of 4 to 6 weeks. In this situation, the company had only four days to transition the advisory board, so they turned it completely over to Vision2Voice’s specialized client services team to execute theaction plan and oversee all the details of the live to virtual conversion. The previous months of planning and content creation for the live, in-person program helped streamline the process tremendously.
The first step was making sure the advisory board participants were still available and completely comfortable with the shift from meeting in person to meeting virtually. While half of the V2V client services team focused on getting the advisors confirmed and back on board, the other half was converting the content from the live program into digital form for the virtual platform to ensure the content was optimized for the new virtual setting.
In addition to preparing the content, the participants also needed prepping on how to set up required tools such as cameras and microphones, connecting to the network, and understanding how to navigate the digital platform. The clock was ticking so the Vision2Voice team implemented an unprecedented accelerated timeline to schedule practice runs, working with every advisor until they were comfortable with the equipment, meeting platform, and best practices for virtual participation in a group event, such as how to frame themselves for a webcam and properly light their environment.
There’s much more to virtual programs and events than typically meets the eye. Pulling off a flawless virtual conversion requires extensive testing of the platform, individual connectivity tests, and redundancy checks prior to the event, which was handled by V2V’s technology team. In addition to pre-event technical checks, they also provided live technical support during the entire event to ensure the pharmaceutical company’s planners, participants, and attendees could enjoy a positive experience with their first virtual advisory board. It takes multiple people to execute a successful program and the entire Vision2Voice client services team was deployed to assist the advisors, verify incoming attendees, monitor engagement, and keep the content flowing throughout the program.
A Positive Impact Influences Future Programs
Because the V2V team was able to develop and deploy an action plan so quickly, every single participant who had committed for the original advisory board was able to attend the virtual ad board meeting. The platform used exceeded the pharmaceutical team’s hopes for engagement as all the participants were able to be together on-screen simultaneously while seeing each other, conversing, and sharing insights in real time. “If you can’t meet in person, this is the only way to go,” said the Senior Program Director. “Being able to allow the group to see and talk to each other as they would have at the in-person event was critical for us to accomplish our objectives.”
When putting virtual and in-person meetings side by side, the cost savings of a virtual program immediately become apparent, providing an attractive option for future events. With a virtual program, there are few, if any, travel, hotel, food, and honoraria costs. Another benefit was being able to engage with healthcare professionals who don’t normally attend in-person programs because they live outside of major metro areas. With virtual programs, these HCPs can be met where they are and have the convenience of participating from their home or office. With ever-changing COVID-19 restrictions and subsequent lockdowns, transitioning this in-person event to a virtual one proved to be a pivotal moment for this Pharmaceutical brand team.
By the end of the program, the Pharmaceutical company, who, just days earlier, had stared down the possibility of cancelling this program they spent months planning for, was pleased by not only the quality of the event, but the high amount of interactivity that naturally occurred despite the concerns of a virtual setting. They learned having the right platform and an experienced digital communications team to help with every step proved invaluable to creating the perfect environment and a successful outcome. The Pharmaceutical company was so impressed with this virtual solution that they engaged Vision2Voice to immediately convert another in-person program to virtual (luckily they had more than four days to work with), and have changed their peer-2-peer strategy and game plan to include virtual advisory boards and other virtual online meetings going forward in place of in-person events. Making the transition from live and in-person to virtual may seem a daunting task, but with the experienced team from Vision2Voice leading the way, this Pharmaceutical company learned they could accomplish a quick shift very successfully and ultimately added a powerful new resource to their marketing playbook.
