Project briefing

The Breakaway Challenge was set up to celebrate keeping active. The fanbase was encouraged to walk, run or ride over 400K miles and log their progress. Every person would contribute to the total and that 400,000-mile target would be turned into dollars. The donation would go to four Heart Disease charities and four Cancer charities based across the US.

Insights 

Amgen’s Breakaway helped to build awareness for both Heart Disease and Cancer. 

The audience across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram was 55+, this audience is most aware of the issues of the diseases and the effect it has on loved ones. It was key for the campaign to expand the audience across the owned social channels. 

The Breakaway Challenge is also associated with the Amgen Tour of California bike race. It was key to drive awareness for the event and get people motivated to watch the race and participate in the Breakaway Challenge. 

Looking at Facebook audience insights, there are over 150M people in the US who run, cycle or play sports. 27M have an association or awareness of Cancer charities while 2.5M have a similar association to Heart Disease. 

Strategy 

It was key to build a strategy that evolved and developed over the course of the campaign. We had to drive over 15,000 Challenge sign-ups during the registration period (April). The challenge went live over May and June, the focus shifted to excite and energise the participants. Towards the end of the campaign, we highlighted those that took place, celebrated the amazing achievement and showcased how the money raised would help Cancer and Heart Disease societies. 

Although we were dealing with life-affecting diseases it was key that the campaign inspires and evokes a fighting spirit. 

The organic campaign had to encourage group activity, prompt social sharing and celebrate the fundraising efforts. We used our experience as a paid social agency to create a paid campaign that would extend the reach and awareness of the campaign. The client also wanted to ask followers to do their bit and donate to the chosen charities. 

Facebook, Instagram were used to drive signups and reach. Youtube was used to grow reach and host long-form content. Twitter’s was used to spark conversation and react to key campaign beats. The activity was geo targeted to the US. However, anyone could participate in the Strava challenge. 

Execution

The campaign was broken down into three clear stages each with a strategy and tactics. Recruit, Challenge and Celebrate. 

Recruit: We used paid social, awareness drivers and positive copywriting to encourage audiences to sign up to the challenge and also follow the breakaway pages. With a mix of social channels, we focused on reaching the target audience but challenged the social metrics to make sure we gave the client the best ROI. The challenge hit it’s 15,000 sign up within the first week. By the end of the challenge, there were over 228,000 signed up. 

Challenge: The Challenge stage gave us lots of talking points, from the amazing work done by the chosen charities, social motivations and the campaign peak; the Amgen Tour of California. It was key to drive the right messages to the most engaged audience and platforms. From communication calendars to hashtag strategies, we delivered a well-rounded campaign that helped grow followers and have a record amount of miles racked up in the Breakaway Challenge.