AbbVie is 10 years old. To get the message out, the Big Pharma has turned to its critical resource: its employees. Across a blog post and social media updates, AbbVie has made employees the primary voice of the campaign to enable them to “express their pride” and show what it’s like to work at the company.
At the start of 2013, Abbott spun off its research-based pharmaceuticals business to form AbbVie. Since then, AbbVie has worked to extract as much money as possible from Humira while preparing for the loss of patent protection on the megablockbuster. The drugmaker is using the anniversary of its split from Abbott to both look back on the past decade and look forward to its post-Humira future.
With that in mind, AbbVie created a video that features employees answering questions such as, “What excites you about the work you do each day?” and “How do you make an impact on patients' lives?” An AbbVie spokesperson explained the thinking behind the decision to put employees at the heart of the campaign.
“We wanted employees to be the primary voices of the campaign, both in terms of what we promote on our social channels and website, but also by creating the opportunity for them to tell their own stories on social media and with fellow employees,” the spokesperson said via email. “Not only is the campaign a way for employees to express their pride, but it also gives prospective employees a sense of what it’s like to work at AbbVie.”
The campaign has internal and external components. Internally, AbbVie has invited employees to share their reflections, pictures and videos on the company’s portal. Externally, employees are “creating their own social posts using the #AbbVie10 hashtag and also engaging with our content,” the spokesperson said.
Searching #AbbVie10 on LinkedIn brings up 38 pages of results. Most of the results are posts by AbbVie employees sharing a 30-second video about the company’s milestone. Some of the posts offer personal reflections on the employee’s time at AbbVie, but others feature the same phrases such as “10 years down! Excited to see what we’ll accomplish in the next 10.” The campaign is continuing.
“We expect to have content and employees telling their own stories throughout the year,” the spokesperson said. “Our senior leaders are also sharing their own stories on LinkedIn, which will continue through the year. The content is global, and running across social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and also on abbvie.com.”
AbbVie also plans to launch a new corporate ad campaign in the second quarter. The flurry of activity comes as AbbVie works through the first year of biosimilar Humira competition in the U.S. Humira, which brought in sales of $18.6 billion in the U.S. last year, has faced competition from Amgen’s copycat since early this year, and more challengers are scheduled to launch in July.