Sativex: Social Media Strategy

Sativex®: Social Media
Marketing Strategy
First years Exam Project at NoMa

Teachers: Anni Grøndal, Lars Haahr, Morten Jul Petersen,
Per Dueholm and Trine Falben Larsen

Guðmundur Sigurfreyr, Inga Rún Krebs and Lonnie
Rasmussen
12/21/2009

2 Sativex®: Social Media Marketing Strategy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................... 4

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM ............................................................................................................................................ 4
PROBLEM DEFINITION .......................................................................................................................................................... 5
ELIMINATION ..................................................................................................................................................................... 5
METHODS USED.................................................................................................................................................................. 5
REPORT OUTLINE ................................................................................................................................................................ 6

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY ..................................................................................................................................... 6

JAN KRAG JACOBSEN'S 24 QUESTIONS ................................................................................................................................. 6
ARISTOTLE´S TRIANGLE OF PERSUASION ................................................................................................................................... 7

BUSINESS ANALYTICAL METHODS .............................................................................................................................. 8

PORTER‘S FIVE FORCES ........................................................................................................................................................ 8
PEST ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................................................. 10
SWOT ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................................... 11

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING .......................................................................................................................................12

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: ANALYSIS.................................................................................................................................. 12
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: STRATEGY AND IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................................. 19
Can Social Media ROI be Measured?....................................................................................................................... 20
TWITTER CAMPAIGN.......................................................................................................................................................... 21
FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN ....................................................................................................................................................... 23
SATIVEX BLOG .................................................................................................................................................................. 24
METRIC TOOLS ................................................................................................................................................................. 25
THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH ENGINES.................................................................................................................................. 26
AIDA MARKETING TOOL .................................................................................................................................................... 27

DESIGN AND INTERACTION ........................................................................................................................................28

WEB 2.0 DESIGN .............................................................................................................................................................. 28
CRAP METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................................... 28
TYPOGRAPHY AND COLOR ................................................................................................................................................... 29
THE EYETRACK III REASEARCH FINDINGS ................................................................................................................................ 30
CODING AND VALIDATING................................................................................................................................................... 31
MIND MAPPING AND THE CORE WORKFLOW PROCESS ............................................................................................................ 32

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................................33

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REFERENCE ................................................................................................................................................................34

BOOKS ............................................................................................................................................................................ 34
INTERNET ........................................................................................................................................................................ 34

WEB SITE DESIGNER MANUAL ...................................................................................................................................35

SIZE SPECIFICATIONS.......................................................................................................................................................... 35
FONT SPECIFICATIONS ........................................................................................................................................................ 35
COLORS .......................................................................................................................................................................... 35
PHOTO, IMAGE ELEMENTS .................................................................................................................................................. 36

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INTRODUCTION

We have chosen Sativex®, a new medicine being developed by GW Pharmaceuticals for multiple
sclerosis (MS), cancer pain and neuropathic pain, as our product. This we think is a challenging
choice because the product is based on the plant Cannabis sativa, which has a rather controversial
reputation. This provides us with numerous problems that require different skills in design,
marketing and representation.

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

In 1999 the Institute of Medicine in New York issued a report it had been asked by the US
government to prepare on use of marijuana as medicine. The basic conclusion of the report was
that marijuana (THC, cannabidiol and other cannanbinoids) was an effective medicine for many
kinds of diseases.

The main problem was however the fact it was smoked. It could therefore have negative effect on
the lungs of patients. In order for the marijuana plant to become a legal medicine some other
means of intake would have to be developed. Dr Geoffrey Guy and Dr Brian White, two well-
known entrepreneurs in the UK biotech sector, heard of these conclusions. They decided to form
GW Pharmaceuticals (GW’s) in order to develop a safer mode of use.

The Sativex® spray device is the outcome of more then decade of research by scientist. It is
already accepted as legal medicine in Canada for treatment of neuropathic pain in MS and for pain
cancer. It is presently under regulatory submission in UK and Spain for the treatment of MS
spasticity. The outcome of this submission is expected around the end of this year or early 2010.
In the United States Sativex® has entered it’s Phase III trials for cancer pain.

These developments have largely gone unnoticed. Our project will be basically to introduce this
innovative medicine to the market. By drawing attention to this new medicine we hope it will be
known in the near future. And be available as medicine to patients that might benefit from it.

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PROBLEM DEFINITION

How do we design a brand visibility, promotion and information campaign that 1) draws attention
to the benefits of Sativex® oral spray, 2) encourages community involvement with our campaign
and 3) is relatively inexpensive?

ELIMINATION

At first we had planned to focus our information campaign not only on patients with MS, cancer
pain or neuropathic pain, but also on the medical profession and on journalist. After further
analysis we decided to limit the campaign to patients, their family members and friends. We came
to realize that a successful marketing of this nature requires three target groups in three distinct
phases: 1) patients, 2) doctors and finally 3) the media. In the report we will only cover subjects
that pertain to the first phase of our promotion strategy.

METHODS USED

In order to come up with creative and effective solutions to our problem we used following
models and methods:

• Mind mapping
• Core Process Workflow
• Eye Tracking Research
• AIDA marketing strategy
• Triangle of Persuasion
• CRAP design methodology
• Jan K. Jacobsens 24 Questions
• Porter‘s 5 forces
• PEST Analysis
• SWOT Analysins

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By applying these methods we analysed and collected data used in planning, designing and giving
content to our marketing stategy. Our main objective is to introduce our product, promote the
brand and inform the general public of it‘s availability.

REPORT OUTLINE

Rest of the report will be stuctered as follows: 1. Communication Strategy, 2. Business Analytical
Methods, 3. Social Media Marketing, 4. Design and Interaction, 6. Conclusions, 7. List of
References. The appendix of the report consist of a designers manual and thumbnails of our media
productions with descriptions of purpose and content.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

In order to devise an effectuful communication strategy we used Jan Krag Jacobsen's 24
Questions and Aristotle´s triangle of persuasion as analytical tools.

JAN KRAG JACOBSEN'S 24 QUESTIONS

Jan Krag Jacobsen's 24 Questions is based on a famous formula coined by the sociologist Harold
Lasswell: "Who says what, in which channel, to whom, with which effect?" Jan Krag Jacobsen's
framework for planned communication helps define your target group accurately, keeps the
message lucid and prevents it from being decoded erroneously. We formulated answers to some
of Jan Krag's most imported questions. 1 Our primary target group are MS patients, patients who
suffer from cancer pain and neuropathic pain. Our secondary target group are family members or
friends of people who suffer from these ailments.

The message to our target group is: ”Sativex is a new cannabis-based medicine that improves the
quality of life for people who suffer from MS, cancer pain or neuropathic pain.” The medium for
our information campaign are the social media networks Twitter and Facebook, a web site, blog,
folder and a poster. The purpose of our campaign is brand visibility, promotion and information
about Sativex®. The intended effect of the campaign is to have our target group obtain
information about our product on our web site and visit our blog.

1
JACOBSEN, Jan Krag. 2009. 24 Questions for planned communication, p. 16.

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The sender is not GW’s, since there are many legal restrictions to advertisement of
pharmaeuatical companies in regards to prescription drugs, but rather an interest group Citizens
for Safe Access (CSA). CSA is committed to ensuring safe, legal availability of cannabis for medical
uses. In a general sense the product is Sativex®, but to pin it down in more precisely it is
information about the product and other cannabis related issues.

ARISTOTLE´S TRIANGLE OF PERSUASION

Aristotle´s triangle of persuasion is based on three devices that a speaker (sender) can use to
influence his audience (target group). They are ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is an appeal to the
authority or qualification of the sender. Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions. Logos is
logical appeal that is normally used to describe facts and figures that support the senders
message.

We use all three devices on our Sativex web site. We appeal to ethos by mentioning extensive
medical trials the producer of Sativex, GW’s, has done for the past 10 years. We also highlight that
the company works closely with both the UK Home Office and the UK’s medicine regulatory
authority. We also mention that GW’s worked with various branches of UK law enforcement to
ensure the strictest security surrounds any work conducted involving the company’s cannabis
plant material.

We use logos persuasion by giving information, facts and figures on the various disease’s Sativex
was designed to combat. We employ pathos by publishing testamonies from patients about their
previous suffering and how they benefited from using Sativex cannabis-based medicine. We
publish photos of them with family members to empathize that this is not an issue that concerns
only patients but also their children, siblings, as well as friends.

We are also sensitive to different ethnographical groups so we publish pictures of patients from
different races.

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BUSINESS ANALYTICAL METHODS

In the initial stages of our work we used three well known marketing and business models;
Porter‘s 5 forces, PEST Anlysis and SWOT Analysis to draw conclusions from economic, social and
technological factors that relate to our product in order to help us find ways to promote it.

PORTER‘S FIVE FORCES

Porter‘s 5 forces model is basically an identification of five fundamental competitive forces: 1)
Entry of competitors. How easy or difficult is it for new entrants to start competing and which
barriers do exist?

Sativex® is a mouth spray medicine based on THC (the active ingredient of the cannabis plant) and
cannabidiol (CBD, also ingredient of same plant with mild sedative effects). It is highly unlikely
that GW’s (that has obtained special permission from the Home Office to develop cannabis-based
drugs) will have to worry about this. Great barriers exist in most countries to possess and to
cultivate cannabis for medical purposes.

Even though other major pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lily, Park Davis, Squibb Co, Bayer’s and
Merck’s produced tinctures made from cannabis in great amounts at one time (it was a major
medicine in the West until 1900) they have been very reluctant to enter this field. Reason being

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one that the cannabis plant is not a synthetic product and can not be patented. Ideological and
political factors have not helped either.

2) Supplier power and 3) Buyer Power are other attributes that have to be taken in to
consideration. How strong is the position of buyers? How strong is the position of suppliers? Since
GW’s have monopoly of their product this is not a major issue.

4) Degree of Rivalry. Is there a strong competition on the market? In short, when it comes to
cannabis-based drugs there is only one other similar product, Marinol®, a synthetic version of THC
in a capsule, produced in the United States. Even though Marinol® has been prescribed and shown
to benefit cancer and AIDS patients, patients suffering from glaucoma, patients with Tourette
syndrome, and is used as cannabis-based medicine by a number of multiple sclerosis patients, who
use it to alleviate neuropathic pain and spasticity, it has certain drawback.

Marinol® is not a natural cannabis product but synthetic. Many patients have complained that
Marinol® produces a more acute psychedelic effect, or “high”, than smoked cannabis, and it has
been speculated that this disparity can be explained by the moderating effect of the many non-
THC cannabinoids present in cannabis. Mainly CBD which has a soothing effect, and is also an
ingredient of Sativex®.

Another factor is that Marinol® is taken orally, which means that patients have no control of the
dose they take. Sativex® is a sub-lingual spray device, it is sprayed under the tongue and absorbed,
rather then swallowed. This way the patients can titer the dose according to their need each time.
Many patients actually say they prefer smoking marijuana then taking the synthetic THC pill. Even
some doctors agree and prefer prescribing marijuana to their patients.2 Taking a Marinol pill to
manage nausea can be ineffective because nausea can cause the pill to be ejected before it is
absorbed by the body. Marinol is also more expensive than medical marijuana, costing for
example US$ 723 for 30 doses. 3

2
DOBLIN, Richard and KLEIMAN, Mark A. R, "Marijuana as Antiemetic Medicine: A Survey of Oncologists' Experiences and
Attitudes." Journal of Clinical Oncology. 1991; 9(7): pp. 1314-1319. Online:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/mmjdobl.cfm. Retrieved 2009-12-17.
3
"Compare Marinol Prices on PharmacyChecker.com". www.pharmacychecker.com. Retrieved 2008-05-31.

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Which brings us to the 5) factor in Porter’s forces: Threat of substitutes. How easy can Sativex® be
substituted, especially made cheaper. This we would say is the major competitive force GW’s
might have to consider. Most likely not for the next 5-10 years or so but possibly in the near
future. Smoked cannabis (marijuana buds) has become accepted medicine in several states in the
Untied States, in Canada, Holland and some other parts of the world. In California it is already a
major legal industry (under state laws) even though the federal government has done it best to
curtail it. Austria, New Zealand and Portugal have more or less legalized cannabis (marijuana and
hashish) consumption. If this trend continues in other countries it might mean that patients might
turn to medical marijuana, which is cheaper then Sativex® and easily attainable, and even grow it
themselves.

Sometimes a sixth competitive force is added to Porter’s 5 forces: Government. How will the
government react in the future to production and distribution of cannabis-based medicine. Is a
reactionary step towards licensing of growing of cannabis to develop prescription drugs likely? The
British Home Office has pledged that if GW’s clinical trials are successful, it will reschedule
cannabis to permit its use in pharmaceuticals. But what if official support changed and the UK’s
medicines regulatory authority where obliged to shut everything down because of political
pressure.

Another threat for GW’s might be if the government would accept another change of policy. This
time in a totally different direction. What if the government would legalize cannabis plant material
(hashish, hash oil and marijuana) in order to regulate it´s use, tax it and control it’s distribution? As
happened in USA when alcohol prohibition was judged a failure.

The patients need for oromucosal spray medicine with THC and CBD would of course not
disappear, but the financial implication to GW's would have to be considered.

PEST ANALYSIS

PEST Analysis is another robust tool used in order to study evironmental factors before beginning
any information campaign or other line of business or marketing. PEST Anlysis is specially
important when you are introducing a new product to the market. This is particularily important,
we think, with the product we are promoting.

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The main challenge with Sativex® as a product is the fact that is based on cannabis which is a
controversial issue in our times. Even though it was once a major medicine in Western
pharmacopoeia (1850—1900) the plant was made illegal in 1937 in the United States and
worldwide 1961 with the UN Single Drug Convention.

PEST Analysis is important because it helps us understand important external issues we have to
deal with. They are basically: Political factors, economic factors, socio-cultural factors and
technological factors. We analyzed our product with these factors in mind to understand better
the situation we were dealing with.

SWOT ANALYSIS

The results from the PEST Analysis where then combined with the Porter’s five forces study. After
having eliminated results that were not appropriate to our situation we used the information we
had gathered to incorporate it into our SWOT Analysis. SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning
model that evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project, a
product or a business venture.

We wanted to use SWOT Analysis not only to identify the present situation, strength, weakness
etc. of our product but also the present social, technological and political situation. But most
importantly generate a strategy or strategic planning to use all of these factors in our favor. How
can we use and capitalize on each strength? Improve each weakness? Benefit from each
opportunity and mitigate each threat?

Many issues evolved from this analysis, and as before we eliminated many of them and solidified
others in order to pin them down to four basic, fundamental internal and external factors. We
wanted to concentrate on the positive ones, as well as resolve the negative ones, in our promotion
campaign.

Internal strength: Sativex® is beneficial medicine that addresses clear unmet patients needs. It is
now legally prescribed in Canada. It has been studied for the past 10 years on 1000 seriously ill
patients and 70% of them have reported significant improvement in quality of their life.

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Internal weakness: Sativex® is still under regulatory submission in UK and Spain and is currently
being tested in the United States. It is not legally prescribed anywhere in the world except Canada.

External opportunities: Importance of social media networks, which paves the way for social
media marketing (SMM). SMM is an inexpensive way to run an information campaign. SMM is also
an ideal way to check how cannabis-based medicine is perceived by then general public.

External threats: Misinformation, prejudice and general ignorance of the subject of cannabinoid
medicine. This ignorance, both of cannabis role in medical history as well as of recent scientific
studies on it’s benefits, is a serious barrier. So is the illegality of the cannabis plant which supports
the idea that cannabis can´t or shouldn´t be used as medicine.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

The PEST Analysis gave us the idea that the best way to run our brand visibility, promotion and
information campaign was to use the new emerging social media marketing (SMM). For the past
two years the importance of social media networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, has
become obvious. Web blogs (such as Wordpress) and social media sharing (YouTube, Flickr) have
become part of peoples life. All over the world. As ComScore (a renown digital measuring service)
reports 734.2 million or two-thirds of the world’s 1.1 billion Internet users, 15 and older, visited at
least one social networking site in May, 2009. 4

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: ANALYSIS

But does this mean that SMM has become an important marketing tool? Are companies using it
and with what result? To answer these questions we turned to Omniture that specializes in web
analytics and online optimization. They introduced this year, in collaboration with Marketing
Sherpa and National Geographic, a study measuring the impact of social media that was done in
2008.

4
COMCORE: http://www.comscore.com/. Retrieved 2009-12-07.

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The result are very interesting. Here is the data reflecting responses to the question, “Are you
using some form of social media for marketing?”

As can be seen, social media is be used by companies, both big and small:

• 8 out of 10 companies of all sizes are using social media
• Size of competitor is not a barrier
• This is a reminiscent of the early days of the World Wide Web

Marketing Sherpa (who did the survey) say this level of involvement is due, for the most part, to
the relatively inexpensive nature of social media.5

Social Media: What’s It Good for?

Determining the role of social media and where it has effect is also an important factor.

5
Workbook: Measuring the Impact of Social Media, http://www.omniture.com/offer/429?s_osc=24051. Retrieved
2009-12-15.

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In this case, brand reputation and awareness top the chart. Overall, the results show:

• Social media is a very effective branding strategy
• Search Engine Optimization uses social media to improve rankings and drive traffic
• Lead generation effectiveness may be lower on the list, but best practices are emerging
rapidly

Marketers are Budgeting and Betting on Social Media in 2009

One thing Marketing Sherpa consistently looks at to determine if a tactic is established or
emerging is how people are spending and planning to spend on it. In this case, there are only two
tactics that reflect a rising budget: Social media (social networks, blog etc.) and emailing to house
list. The data can be seen on the graphic below:

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Analysis reveals the following:

• Social media is benefiting from free or low-cost perception
• Since social media is human capital intensive, salaries are the bulk of spending
• Social media and email spend are increasing more than decreasing

Where Do Buyers/Influencers Get Information About Your Product?

As little as two years ago, social media may not have even been considered in the flow of product
information.

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Yet, now social media is here and shifting momentum:

• Social media sites have surpassed company Web sites
• They are used to find objective information about a considered purchase
• Company sites still offer a valuable source of subjective information

During the buying consideration process, from a home toaster to a piece of construction
equipment, potential buyers are looking for product feedback from current users. Then, they turn
to company Web sites as the go to search for specifications and complete details.

Buyers Share Information and Opinions in Peer Conversations

Continuing the communications flow, those buyers are then sharing information they find via
social media.

This cycle is based on convenience and has both negative and positive side:

• Web 2.0 tools enable easy sharing with friends and peers
• Upside: sharing creates viral, exponential reach
• Downside: negative conversations reach further

Categorizing Traffic Sources

Ted McDonald, Manager of Web Analytics at National Geographic says his employer can now easily

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see the increasing impact of social media on overall site traffic. In June 2009, for instance, visitors
from social media sites accounted for 8.4 percent of traffic—the highest percentage ever. In
addition, visitors from social media sites more than doubled since June 2008. Using Site Catalyst, a
web traffic measuring tool from Omniture, the magazine can compare categories of traffic to see
how they perform over time.

As can be seen from the Site Catalyst Category Report from above the social media gives more
total visits to National Geographic website then pay-per-click Ads.

Can the Social Media Category be Broken Down Further?

Ted McDonald wanted to see how the Category Report was broken down further. By making
minor adjustments to subcategories media specialist Danny Sullivan had done on different types
of social medias National Geographic came up with five subcategories. They are:

• Social News Sites (such as Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz)
• Social Bookmarking Sites (such as Delicious, Stumble Upon)
• Social Networking (such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
• Social Knowledge (such as Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers)
• Social Sharing (such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Urban Spoon, Yelp)

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By doing this, National Geographic quickly saw that half of all their social media traffic comes from
the social news sites subcategory.

Does SMM have International Impact?

When SMM plan is revised it is important to note that some of the most popular domestic media
sites are not used in the biggest countries of the world. This can be important if your target group
is global and the product you are promoting internationally available, which it certainly it is if it can
be bought online. When it comes to information campaigns this is also important. Even though
you are not promoting a product that consumers can buy, but rather ideas or information, change
of attitudes in one country is bound to have an effect in other parts of the world.

Here is map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to
Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data (June 2009).

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It seems that Facebook has almost colonized Europe and it´s extending its domination with more
than 300 million users worldwide.

Twitters popularity has grown rapidly. Here are the numbers of U.S. unique visitors in a period of
only 1 year:

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: STRATEGY AND IMPLEMENTATION

What can we learn from this? It is obvious from the study above and other media research that
SMM is a powerful marketing strategy that offers powerful marketing oppurtunities, at
exceptional low cost. We decided that SMM would be the best choice for our our brand visibility,
promotion and information campaign.

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To gain success in SMM it is vital to define the primary ojectives of your SMM campaign and align
it with the approriate SMM strategy. This means in other words 1) we need to define clear goals,
2) choose a proper social media network channels to reach these goals, 3) spread the right
message about our product on different chosen platforms on consistent basis 4) find a way to get
people emitionally invested in the campaign 5) get the mainstream „traditional“ media i.e. TV,
newspapers, magazines involved — and at last but not least — 5) measure objectively the success
or the impact our social media marketing is having.

CAN SOCIAL MEDIA ROI BE MEASURED?

According to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 86% of
professionals in a variety fields said that they have adopted social media in some way. The survey
reported also that 84% of social media programs don’t measure return on investment (ROI). 6 The
standard formula formula, ROI, is rather basic, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is
your starting value. In other words, if you invest 5 DKK and get back 20 DKK, your ROI is (20 – 5) / 5
= 3 times your initial investment. In the financial sense, ROI is measured purely in the context of
dollars or kroner however, the principles can really apply to any type of investment — monetary
or not.

Even though ROI does not equal website metric measurement in the strictest sense of the word
traditional web metrics like traffic counts, number of comments on blog, Twitter followers,
Facebook fans, downloaded pdf files etc. are an important component when calculating your ROI.
It is of course not important to rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up
leading to.

For instance in our Sativex campaign; does our increase in website visitors correlate with higher
rates of downloaded pdf information sheets? Having metric for something like Twitter mentions or
blog comments is pretty meaningless if you don´t know if those mentions are positive or negative.
Another vital factor is to define a baseline before starting or changing your social media strategy.

6
E MARKETER, http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007286. Last retrieved 2009-12-16.

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TWITTER CAMPAIGN

Twitter is an online communication tool that combines the best elements
of blogging, social networking and messaging. Twitter allows people to post
concise 140 character messages, which are published on their publicly viewable page. Posting a
message is quick and easy, it can be done from any internet connected computer or a mobile
phone with SMS text message. In order to follow tweets from others you become their follower.
Likewise if somebody wants to follow what you publish he/she become a follower of you or the
brand/ company/ institution that uses Twitter.

One of the things that makes Twitter so powerful from a communications perspective is that you
can “re-tweet” something you find interesting from a person you are following to your own
followers, which can re-tweet it to his/hers followers and so on. Popular re-tweets can reach a
large audience very quickly.

Our Sativex Twitter campaign is based on four steps:

1) The campaign starts by sending out a simple message with a call to action: “Cannabis-
based medicine improves patients quality of life. Find out more http://www.sativex.com.”
These simple messages will change, sometimes it will focus on our primary target group
(patients) and sometimes on our secondary target group (friends and family of patients).
The goal is to drive people to the Sativex website to get information on this new medicine
and preferably download information sheets, scientific reports and other written material
that advocates the benefit of Sativex.
2) It is important to make the mainstream media aware of the campaign. We have come up
with the idea of having a poster advertising the website put under the roof of bus stops.
This would be a photographic opportunity for a sympathetic journalist who would bring the
photo to the editor hopefully for publication in a major newspaper. The poster campaign
will start by a ,,crude’’ basic poster (that does not say much) to create curiosity and query,
shortly followed by a more detailed message poster (see Appendix). The goal is to drive
people to the Sativex homepage.

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3) The impact of the Twitter campaign will be measured by number of Twitter followers,
number and sentiment of tweets, visit to the website and number of downloaded
information material.

There are different styles to Twitter sites when it comes to brands; a rather relaxed,
conversational style or a more formal one. We opt for the more informative and factual tone,
although happy to answer questions and engage directly with people. Another thing we have
to remember. Twitter can be a great tool for driving traffic to our web site, but using Twitter
stream as nothing more than a redirection service to point people to our Sativex site is sure to
be considered nothing but spam. If we want to build a strong presence on Twitter, we must
engage with users.

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FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN

Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for business, promotion and
campaigning. Facebook now has over 300 million users and offers a very powerful platform on
which to build a presence. Our Sativex Facebook campaign is based on interaction with the users.
The idea is to get people emotionally invested in the campaign. In order to do that we need a
celebrity, preferably a famous film director like Oliver Stone or actor like Woody Harrelson (both
out-spoken advocates of marijuana legalization) to edit video for the campaign.

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We start by sending a simple twitterable message that drives users to our Facebook. Once there
they are asked to send in short video segments on their own experience, friends or family
members with cannabis-based medicine. Our celebrity edits it in to a single video later to be
shown on our Facebook and Sativex homepage. This approach might sound far-fetched in Europe
but will certainly strike a cord in USA where there are about 577.000 medical marijuana users.7 As
with our Twitter campaign the impact of Facebook campaign can be measured directly.

SATIVEX BLOG

Web 2.0 has brought along a new marketing tool, blog. Even though blog, with all
the tweets and facebooking going on, is not as hot topic today as few years ago it
should not be underestimated by any enterprise. It helps you target audience. An
average blog entices approximately 55% more visitors than a website. If your blog
has a bit of personal or informal tone along with commentary function, you can gain a better
insight into your target audiences’ perspective. And, this would help in building an interactive
environment that would involve your potential visitors also. A blog allows you to go deep, in areas
that a static web site cannot. Through video, podcasts, or simple frequent posts, your blog is
putting a human face on your company. No longer are you just an anonymous URL. Now you are a
thinking, engaging company that people want to do business with.

A blog also gives your business multiple ways to be found on the Internet. There are a number of
blog directories, where you can submit your blogs and the search engine bots will index your blog.
The more your brand visibility is, the better chances are of your brand establishing it self. Search
engines have great affinity for fresh and unique content. Adding keyword-rich blog content will
make your site more appealing to search engines. This may result in giving a remarkable boost to
the search engine rankings for your website thereby increasing your web traffic considerably.

Word Press is our obvious choice for a blog platform. It is free, open-source publishing platform
that provides us with numerous themes we can tweak to our needs. Word Press is also known for
following web standards and has great usability. The goal of our web blog is to build a relationship
to our target group. We would not only talk about our product but anything relevant to our

7
PRO CON.ORG, http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=001199. Last retrieved 2009-12-17.

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audiences. Net users have become bored with repetitive marketing messages. On our blog we
have an opportunity to build customer trust by giving them feedback, overcome their doubts and
readdress any potential misconceptions. This is specially important with a product like Sativex.

In order to draw attention to our blog we
will send tweets about certain blogs and
publish them also on our Facebook. At the
same time we will install helpful plug-ins,
such as a Tweet Meme ( ) button, which
makes it easy for people to re-tweet our
posts on Twitter. Then we will have Share
This button on or blog, as well as on our
website to make it easy for users to share
content. This increase traffic and engagement. We provide our readers with the possability to
subscribe to our updtates via RSS. Our idea is to create traffic back and forth from our Twitter,
Facebook, blog and website. In order to grab the attention of mainstream media and create buzz
on other blogs, websites and within the social media community we came up with the idea to use
audio blog when replying to readers comments. Audi blog, though not a new phenomena, hasn´t
been put in to much use yet. Instead of writing and typing posts for our Sativex blog, we can in
some cases add audio files of us expressing our thoughts and responses to our readers online
comments. This will give our blog a unique flavor as well as putting a human face on our campaign.
As with Twitter and Facebook the impact of our blog can be objectively measured by number of
visitors, RSS subscribers, links pointing to our blog etc. Which brings us to the subject of metric
tools we will be using to calculate our progress, or lack of.

METRIC TOOLS

We did a round up of several tools available for measuring web traffic. Google Analytics is free
and it can provide a really powerful baseline for a variety of different factors. You can track
incoming links and then the activities of the users they send, which can be helpful. Omniture has

25


various services available for businesses, including components that track Facebook and Twitter
metrics.

PostRank Analytics measures social engagement on other platforms and services. What is helpful
about PostRank is that instead of just a raw number, you can actually see the messages and
comments from other sites that contribute to your statistics. This can be really important for
sentiment analysis. As we did mention before it makes no sense of rejoicing about increaced
traffic to your web site, blog or social media if you don´t know the sentiment that goes with it.

Jodange offers a service geared toward online publishers that let’s them incorporate opinion data
drawn from over 450,000 sources, including mainstream news sources, blogs and Twitter. This
allows you to track what's being said about your brand or products.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH ENGINES

I n October this year interesting research data was
published by ad network Chitika on the quality of
visitors from social networking sites. The Chitika
study looked at the quality of traffic from search
engines and social networks, and the results were surprising. According to the study social sites
Facebook and Digg are more likely to send returning traffic to your web site than search engines
such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing. More than one-fifth of users referred to a site by Facebook
visited at least four times in the course of a week. Less than 12% of Google-referred visitors were
as loyal, about the same percentage as Twitter.

But this is only half the story. Even though visitors from social media sites are loyal, the share from
networking sites are very small. An earlier Chitika Study concluded that “the overwhelming
dominance of search engines is facing little, if any, threat from social networks.” 8 The company
looked at the top sites sending traffic to the publishers in its network and found that Google alone
accounted for 76.13% of referrals. Taken together, search engines made almost 98% of all
referrals, while social networking sites made up just 0.55%.

8
E MARKETER, http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007346. Last retrieved 2009.12.17.

26


This underscores the prime importance of Search Engines in sending traffic to our site. We will not
uses Flash, frames, graphic text or graphic links (except in one instance used with CSS Sprite) since
they thwart search engines and are harder to bookmark. Same applies to navigations that rely on
JavaScript, Java or Flash. They can not be indexed since search engine spiders and bots require
text.

AIDA MARKETING TOOL

AIDA is a known marketing model used to describe a process of events that are initiated by a
company that is selling a product or some kind of service. The acronym stands for attention,
interest, desire and action. The idea is to attract attention of the customer, raise consumers
interest in the product, create desire or need for the product and finally encourage action or
purchasing of the product.

We used the AIDA marketing model in planning our SMM strategy. We draw attention to our
campaign by using first “material” means. Material tools, so to speak, are distribution of a folder,
poster and a badge people can pin on themselves. This we distribute in specific places i.e. libraries,
to interest groups that concern themselves with MS and cancer patients, hospitals, health care
centers, pharmacies etc. This will only do so far.

To invoke further interest we start to send tweets, collect friends on Facebook and activate our
blog. About the same time we start the bus stop poster campaign. This does not need to be
extensive or expensive. Few poster will do. Our main goal is to get the mainstream media
attention to our campaign. One photograph of the bus stop poster in a daily newspaper will do.

The next step is to awake desire of our target group to engage in the campaign by introducing the
celebrity to our Facebook campaign. As before we try to leverage the main stream media. The
celebrity participation should do the trick. From the very start our goal is to encourage action of
our target group to visit our web site and educate themselves about the issue. The success of the
information campaign will be measured by this criteria.

27


DESIGN AND INTERACTION

The Sativex web site is the main focus we want to direct our visitors to. The tweets, blog posts and
Facebook post are meant to direct our target group to the web site which will contain most of the
information we like to share with them.

WEB 2.0 DESIGN

The concept, style and tone of the Sativex web site is based on what has been called ‘‘Web 2.0
Design‘‘. Even though the term is most often used to refer to a social phenomena deriving from
new types of online communities and social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.) it can also
be used to describe a recent school of web design. The main features are big and bold logos,
central layout, 2 columns, separate top section (the main branding and navigation area), bigger
text, bold text introductions, strong colors, gradients and general simplicity in presentation. Web
2.0 design is focused, clean and simple.9 The main goal is to communicate the relevant
information, not just decorate.

Our web site is more are less designed with these principles in mind. Another thing we wanted to
do is to take the web site out of the constricted ,,box‘‘, so to speak, and give it a liquid, elastic
quality. The central layout is there but it is not contained or framed in as happens when the white
content is contrasted with a darker background.

CRAP METHODOLOGY

CRAP (contrast, repitition, alignment, proximity) is a design methodology that we used in our web
site development. We chose a darkred (#CD38383, maroon) color in the logo of the web site as an
contrast to the blue header and a white (#FBFBFB) and lightgray gradients texture of the site. The
basic box-like structure of the content area is contrasted by the blue header that stretches out in
both directions. This gives the web site an elastic quality even though it is build on a fixed central
layout.

9
HUNT, Ben. 2008. Save the Pixel: The Art of Simple Web Design.

28


To insure repitition we have on all pages a left-side bar with a picture of a patient that uses Sativex
and his or hers testamony. The navigation (both bar at the top and the colored boxes below copy)
are repeated through the whole website as well as many other relevent elements. All written
content is aligned as well as other design elements. We assure proximity by grouping all related
elements together whereas separate design elements have enough space in between to
communicate they are different.

The social networking buttons (Share It, Add This, and Join us on Twitter, Facebook and Word
Press blog) are a very important element of the web site since they contribute to our SMM
strategy. They are a typical attribute of the Web 2.0 innovation. They are grouped together in
three different location and repeated (as the Download pdf link) in all pages of the web site.

Even though Add This and Share It have bascially the same function we use both of them. Add This
is put on top with print and ‘old fashion’ email possibilities for those visitors that light scan the
web site but might want to link it to themselves for later reference (or to others) before they
leave. Share It is however put below the articles for those visitors who have taken time to read the
copy and feel inspired to share it´s content on Facebook, Twitter etc. with friends or family. On the
left side bar we have links to our social networks; Twitter, Facebook and blog. They are put there
because we hope after the visitor has read the testamonies of the patient he or she might feel
emotionally moved to engage further in the campaign.

TYPOGRAPHY AND COLOR

In the web site logo we decided to use a totally new font
Kanis that has just been developed and can be
downloaded as freeware from Dafont.com. We also use
Kanis in the top navigation bar which is based on CSS
Sprite. CSS Sprite gives the developer the possibility to use CSS to make hover effect with an image
rather then Javacript. It wasn´t until later that we realized that the font Kanis reminds us of the
word kannabis, which is the Greek expression the English word cannabis evolved from.

In the logo we use the familiar gradient and shadow effect that is so popular in Web 2.0 logo
design. The color we opted for is #CD38383 maroon. It advances toward the viewer and stands for

29


experience and wisdom in color psychology. It can be seen for example in the monk frocks of Dali
Lama and other Tibetian lama’s. The logo is big and bold, in line with the general Web 2.0
principles. 10

At the same time we have to be careful and remember we are promoting a pharmaeutical
product. The sober, scientific and medical atmosphere of the web site is created by the “cold” blue
color (#034B93). The smooth apperance is created by light gray gradients, #333 dark gray colors of
fonts, instead of the customory black, and the more pallid #FBFBFB white instead of #000000.

The links below the copy were created by a hack I developed to make rounded boxes with
shadows with pure CSS. This is done by fooling the browsers that he is reading the normal pre
selector, when he is actually reading pre1, pre2, and pre3 “selectors” I created myself. This works
fine in Firefox 3.5.6 (as can be seen above) but in IE 6.0, 7.0 etc. it only shows up as a basic text
link. Accordingly this is only a temprory solution. But I wanted to experiment with how much I
could do with pure CSS.

It is a rather sad that IE doesn´t even regconize perfectly “legal” CSS selectors and proprieties that
have been around for many years and are recommended by W3C.org to all developers of web
browsers.

The color of the boxes; versions of green, red and yellow, where chosen with the colors of traffic
light in mind. Green: go on to Sativex, Red; stop the disease and Yellow; wait, don´t judge until
you have all the facts in.

THE EYETRACK III REASEARCH FINDINGS

The Eyetrack III research is an important tool for multimedia designers, web developers and
website managers.11 Everyone who is involved in SMM can certainly benefit from eyetracking
research findings.
10
WEB 2.0 HOW-TO DESIGN GUIDE, http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/web-2.0-design-style-guide.php.
Last retrieved 2009-12-21.

30


Among other interesting findings Eyetrack III research has uncovered are: 1) Dominant elements
most often draw the eyes first upon entering the page — especially when they are in the upper
left part of the page. 2) Text rules on the computer screen – both in order viewed and in overall
time spent looking at it, 3) Smaller type encourages focused reading, while larger types promotes
lighter scanning, 3) Web readers look typically at text elements before their eyes land on an
accompanying photo, 4) The bigger the image, the more time people took to look at it, 5) Shorter
paragraphs performed better than longer ones, 6) Navigation placed at the top of a homepage
performed best, 7) When testers encountered a story with a boldface introductory paragraph,
95% of them viwed all or part of it.

All these findings were assimilated into our web site design. Web site logo is in the upper left part
of the page. The navigation bar is positioned in the area of Priority 1 according to research results.
We use smaller type in testamonies of patients and 12 pixel size Arial (or Helvetica in case of some
Mac’s) fonts in the main content copy. This is actually a break away from Web 2.0 design style
(who recommend bigger font size) but we feel the eyetracking results should be respected. As the
Web 2.0 gurus say themselves, the goal is to communicate not decorate.

Whe use rather big images of patients, not to mention the Javascript run header on the front page
which is huge. Most importantly we use a special CSS styled introductory that should please all
Eyetrack III advocates and Web 2.0 enthusiasts.

CODING AND VALIDATING

We coded the website in strict XHTML. In order to seperate content from presentation Cascading
Style Sheet (CSS) was used. This allows us to change the appearance and layout of the whole site
with change in only one CSS file. This might be neccasary in the future in order to allow users
(specially those that have bad eyesight) to have more control over the way the the site looks. This
can be done by using ems and percentages in fonts, providing site navigation that scales to any
size or amount of content, by designing a layout that expands and contracts regardless of window
width or text size etc. This “bulletproof Web design” standard is of course the best way to design a

11
THE BEST OF EYETRACK III, http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm. Last retrieved 2009-12-21.

31


web site that is accessible to all users. 12 Not to mention patitents who suffer from glaucoma that
might want to visit Sativex homepage, as soon as they find out that cannabis-based medicine has
proved to be helpful in improving glaucoma.13

The JavaScript slider on the front page that shows an image of Cannabisol, a cannabis-based
medicine produced in Denmark (1935—1950), and an image of Sativex® liquid spray is done by
Scriptocean Javascript Slideshow Wizard.

We validated the web site with Dreamweaver validator with no error or warnings found. Except of
course for the CSS pre selector hack I mentioned before. Since the web site is meant only to be a
prototype we did not test it for browsers compatibility. The web site was however designed with
Firefox browser in mind. Firefox is the most popular browser in use today. It has 47% of the users
market compared to 11-13% of Microsoft’s IE 8,7, 6.14 We took some of the basic weakness of IE
into consideration and added hacks for IE in the header of the XHTML in order to help it a long.

MIND MAPPING AND THE CORE WORKFLOW PROCESS

Mind map was another technique used in the development of this project. A mind map is a
diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a
central key word or idea. By presenting ideas in a radial, graphical, non-linear manner, mind maps
encourage a intuitive approach to planning and organizational tasks. It is very helpful to come up
with ideas that are “out of the box” so to speak. Core Process Workflow is another work model
that was partly used in the web site development. From it we took the suggestions of using
sitemapping and wireframing in the development of the site sructure.

12
CEDERHOLM, Dan. 2008. Bulletproof Web Design. Berkeley: New Riders.
13
MATHRE, Mary Lynn, Ed. 1997. Cannabis in Medical Practice, p. 94—111. USA: McFarland.
14
November 2009. See ´´Browsers Statistics“, http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp. Last
retrievied 2009-12-21.

32


CONCLUSION

So lets return back to our problem defintion. How do we design a brand visibility, promotion and
information campaign that 1) draws attention to the benefits of Sativex® oral spray, 2) encourages
community involvement with our campaign and 3) is relatively inexpensive?

The answear in short is: By using social media marketing. To gain success in SMM it is vital to
define the primary ojectives of our SMM campaign and align it with the approriate SMM strategy.

This means in other words:

1) Define clear goals: drive people to the Sativex.com homepage.
2) Choose a proper social media network channels to reach these goals: Twitter, Facebook and
Word Press blog.
3) Spread the right message about our product on these social networks on consistent basis:
Sativex is a modern cannabis-based medicine that improves the quality of life for patients
with MS, cancer pain and neuropathic pain.
4) Get people emitionally invested in the campaign: use testamonies of patients who use
Sativex and a celebrity to edit video segments sent in.
5) Get the mainstream „traditional“ media i.e. TV, newspapers, magazines involved: use out of
the box bus stop posters and a celebrity in the campaign.
6) Measure objectively the success or the impact our social media marketing is having: use web
measuring tools like Google Analytics, PostRank Analytics and Jodange.

We think that Web 2.0 social networking is a major
breaktrough in web and media development and would like to thank our teachers at NoMa for
bringing our attention to it.

33


REFERENCE

BOOKS

DABNER, David. 2004. Graphic Design School: The Principles and Practices of Graphic Design.
London: Thames and Hudson.

HUNT, Ben. 2008. Save the Pixel: The Art of Simple Web Design.

JACOBSEN, Jan Krag. 2009. 24 Questions for Planned Communication. Roskilde: Roskilde University
Press.

GOTO, Kelly and Emily COTLER. 2005. Web Redesign: Workflow That Works. Berckley: Peachpit Press.

GRINSPOON, Lester and James B. BAKALAR. 1993. Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine. USA: Yale
University Press.

WEINBERG, Tamar.
2009. The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. USA: O’Reilly Media.

WILLIAMS, Robin.
2004. The Non-Designers Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the
Visiual Novies. Beckley CA: Peachpit Press.

INTERNET

Eyetrack III: Online News Consumer Behaviour in the Age of Multimedia,
http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm.

Web 2.0 How-to Design Guide, http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/web-2.0-
design-style-guide.php. Last retrieved 2009-12-21.

Writing for the Web, http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/

Workbook: Measuring the Impact of Social Media,
http://www.omniture.com/offer/429?s_osc=24051. Retrieved 2009-12-15.

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WEB SITE DESIGNER MANUAL

SIZE SPECIFICATIONS

Page dimensions: Central fixed layout, width: 996 pixels.

Logo: width: 259 pixels, height: 101 pixels.

Main header: width: 996 pixels, height: 330 pixels

Subpage header: width: 996 px, heigth: 69 px.

Top navigation: height: 39 pixels, CSS Sprite is used with different width of navigation boxes.
Home: 177 px, Sativex: 142 px, Patient: 170 px, History: 144 px.

Images of patients: width: 216 px, various height.

Left sidebar: width: 259 px.

Content area: width: 650 px.

Box for subnavigation round corner boxes: width: 650 px.

FONT SPECIFICATIONS

Global typefaces: Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif. Line-hight: 17 px.

Logo font: Kanis.

Top navigation font: Kanis.

Excerpts typefaces: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif.

COLORS

Background-color: #FBFBFB (pallid white).

Copy font color: #333 (dark gray).

Color of header for main page and subpages: #034B93 (blue).

35


Color of logo: #BC2525 (dark red). Shadow: #DRDRDR (light gray).

Color of indtroduction copy and h1 headers: #034B93 (blue).

Color of excerpt: #C41230 (maroon).

Color of link boxes (subnavigation): Sativex: #66ba45, Patient: #C2A303, History: #C41230.

PHOTO, IMAGE ELEMENTS

Web Site Logo:

Header Images Used in JavaCript Slider:

36


Subnavigation rounded corner boxes:

Top Navigation CSS Sprite Elements:

In regards to other design, image and layout features we refer to the style sheet sativex.css

37


APPENDIX

Bus Stop Poster Campaign

The first version of the Bus Stop Poster Campaign is the ,,crude” one, meant to evoke attention
without say much. The goal is to drive people to the Sativex.com web site.

The other version is more detailded without giving away to much either:

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Sativex: Social Media Strategy

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