Finalist 2024
Corporate Influencer
Brand
Gilead
Entered by:
POLITICO
Eradicating HIV Transmission
The Challenge
Innovative medications have already changed HIV infection from a deadly disease to a manageable chronic condition. But to end HIV entirely, Europe requires new treatment and prevention options adapted to the needs of individuals, new healthcare policies, and new approaches to fighting the stigma that HIV still carries. While the future for HIV patients is not bleak like it once was, it is critical to maintain momentum to eradicate the disease entirely.
The Strategic Solution
Gilead, a biopharmaceutical company, is leading innovation in the fight to stop transmission of HIV and AIDS globally. For its 2023 campaign, Gilead wanted to partner with POLITICO to build awareness of UNAIDS’ goal to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 to a European policymaker audience and highlight innovation’s role in getting us there.
This campaign asked policymakers to champion innovation that will make people’s lives better. We know that hearing individual voices and experiences move policymakers to act. POLITICO Media Solutions research (https://www.politico.eu/media-solutions-democracy-spotlight/) shows that policymakers look to businesses for anecdotes that help make macro policy debates tangible. Companies that lean on local insights are particularly powerful.
Podcasts are the perfect medium for telling human stories and evoking emotional responses. In a world of information overload, reaching listeners during traditionally unreachable moments allows brands to cut through the noise and make an impact. Podcasts are booming globally, and POLITICO’s audio offering continues to grow in popularity with our audience, offering a way for brands to make an intimate connection with our listeners.
We decided to build our campaign around a special podcast series exploring the latest challenges in the fight to eradicate HIV, highlighting stories of people living with the disease and committed to battling it.
The Content Solution
We wanted our campaign to feel native to POLITICO and grounded in credible insights, so we leveraged POLITICO’s newsroom to create the special podcast series. As sponsor, Gilead was positioned as an expert elevating the discussion on eradicating HIV transmission in Europe.
The series launched at the end of June 2023 with episodes dropping weekly. The first episode brought listeners behind the bars of French prison successfully tackling the spread of HIV, the second episode focused on HIV stigma and criminalization, while the third focused on the race for a cure.
After the newsroom’s episodes hooked our audience with independent insights and built familiarity with the latest challenges surrounding HIV, a final episode produced by POLITICO Studio brought in an expert from Gilead and zoomed in on innovations (Gilead’s core topic), while still maintaining an editorial tone. Hosted by a veteran journalist (and longtime volunteer with HIV organizations), we spoke with a professor of infectious diseases in Italy, a professor of psychology who has been living with HIV for decades, and a member of the European Parliament from Spain – just as Spain was starting its presidency of the Council of the European Union. It was a rare coup to get an active policymaker’s involvement in a branded piece.
At the end of the year, around World AIDS Day (1 December), POLITICO Studio launched written content – a Q&A (one of our most popular formats) with a Gilead stakeholder and an article exploring the transformative impact of PReP drugs. This variety in formats helped us reach a bigger audience and strengthen brand recognition.
Episode 1: https://www.politico.eu/podcast/from-cell-to-cell-eliminating-hiv-in-prisons/
Episode 2: https://www.politico.eu/podcast/the-last-bastion-of-stigma-criminalizing-hiv-transmission/
Episode 4: https://www.politico.eu/podcast/end-epidemic-innovation-eradicate-hiv-aids/
Q&A (‘Ending HIV in the EU’): https://www.politico.eu/sponsored-content/qa-ending-hiv-in-the-eu/
Article (‘Transforming HIV prevention in Europe’): https://www.politico.eu/sponsored-content/transforming-hiv-prevention-in-europe/
The Media/Content Amplification Solution
One of the toughest challenges in podcasts is building an audience. We circumvented this by embedding our episodes directly into the feed of POLITICO Europe’s main podcast show, EU Confidential. This meant that the episodes surfaced automatically to subscribers on their preferred podcast platform. Called “EU Confidential: In Focus,” the series was also promoted to subscribers of Telescope, POLTICO’s newsletter investigating the AIDS epidemic that Gilead had sponsored the previous two years. Further promoting brand awareness, Gilead also sponsored the regular EU Confidential podcast during the weeks that the In Focus series ran.
The last editorial podcast was recorded live in front of an audience in POLITICO’s offices. This custom event allowed Gilead to have a tangible, intimate connection with their target audience. Gilead had opening remarks, kicking off the discussion with their expert point of view.
POLITICO Studio’s content was amplified through multiple channels, including Twitter, Facebook and onsite (using contextual targeting to reach active readers of our health care section), to guarantee and maximize reach. Meanwhile 2x sponsorships of our Morning Health Care newsletter guaranteed that Gilead’s messaging landed directly in the inbox of influential individuals. The first sponsorship aligned with the release of our podcast series, while the second sponsorship was during Brussels’ busy ‘Back To School’ period in September. With a steady drip of content from June through the end of the year, our always-on campaign kept Gilead’s messaging constantly in the minds of our audience.
The Result
Only one percent of podcasts have more than 5k downloads – and our episodes overachieved that number by far. The newsroom’s podcast episodes and the branded episode all achieved similar strong results, with over 13k plays each. The average listen time for the branded episode (22 minutes long) was more than 50%, reflecting fantastic engagement. The episodes received a warm organic reception on social, with a WHO public health specialist and other stakeholders promoting and recommending it to their networks.
Our strategy of anchoring our campaign with newsroom content before delving into branded content proved successful. The Q&A achieved benchmarks while the online article outperformed, with 50% more page views than average and a read time of nearly 4 minutes.
With the European Parliament and several national elections, 2024 was set to be a crucial moment to keep momentum around eradicating HIV front of mind for Europe’s policymakers. Given the success of the branded content, our campaign set the scene for a larger, brand-led campaign in 2024, which will allow Gilead to control the content narrative entirely and shine the spotlight on their work at a pivotal time.