Case study · Pharmaceutical
Advil
A COVID-19 facts site about ibuprofen, live within a week
250,000+ views; about 120M social impressions
The short version
Edelman had a week to stand up a fact-based COVID-19 hub on advil.com while the misinformation was still spreading. I led UX and UI, and because the engagement had no project manager, I also kept the schedule for the whole team: the crisis team's inputs, the client reviews and the development team in India.
The partnership continued with #aftertheshot, a vaccine-confidence initiative for Advil.
The problem
Early in the COVID-19 outbreak, misinformation in the news and on social media left many people unsure whether ibuprofen was safe for COVID-19 symptoms. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which makes Advil, asked Edelman to correct it quickly and protect the brand from future risk.
How do you correct a health rumor on a brand’s own site while it is still spreading?
Within a week, our cross-discipline team was delivering early, fact-based recommendations. We worked within the existing component library, and the hub had to live behind the site's COVID-19 alert banner instead of in the main navigation.
How I worked
Guided by daily social and earned media monitoring, we built the hub as the home for the facts, company statements and social posts, and targeted advertising brought people to it.
Because the hub sat behind the banner, consistent anchor links on the primary pages gave users a path to it from anywhere on the site.
To keep the build moving, I wrote a component deliverable that specified and vetted each component's behavior with the development team. It cut the back-and-forth considerably.
What I did
- Competitive research
- Information architecture
- Wireframes
- Visual design
- Content strategy
- Photography sourcing
- Client presentation
Key design decisions
Medical guidance on using anti-inflammatories is easy to find from anywhere on the site.
Medical experts explain ibuprofen and COVID-19 on video, in their own words.
Recent research from key studies is summarized and linked to the full articles and published papers.
A glossary explains the medical terms.
The FAQ answers the questions people were actually asking, found with the SEO and social listening teams.
Results
The hub drew more than 250,000 views, and its top content on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter reached about 120M impressions.
The work was recognized nationally within Edelman and featured as a case study on the Edelman homepage.