Pistoia Alliance

Driving Innovation In The Life Sciences

The life sciences industry is struggling to overcome the many barriers which make it increasingly difficult to discover new treatments that will have a significant impact on patients’ lives. With so many ‘big’ problems to solve, getting the attention of the C-Suite in pharma is a challenge. The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for profit group that enables precompetitive collaboration, needed to create stories that resonate with this audience, as well as continue to grow its membership base.

Objective

Gain C-Suite recognition for the importance of precompetitive collaboration and engage them in driving the agenda of the Pistoia Alliance.

Story

Spark was tasked with creating a storyboard to explore hot topics in pharma and align the Alliance with the industry’s most interesting stories – from technology, to business, to research. As part of this campaign, Spark built a theme around managing patient data; a significant problem for all pharma companies, as access to patient data is crucial to innovation in research and drug discovery.

One solution is a blockchain – but a key barrier to its adoption is a lack of collaboration on data storage standards – which the Alliance and its members can work to address. Spark created a short member survey to assess industry readiness and understanding of blockchain. With the results, Spark created a data-driven media alert to take to the press. As part of the PR programme, Spark also pitched interviews, features and opinion articles, to build awareness of the Alliance.

Results

In under a year Spark secured more than 70 pieces of national and international coverage; including The Financial Times and The Times, as well as key vertical and trade media across life sciences, pharma and technology. A key part of the campaign has been the interview programme. More than 20 interview opportunities were secured to discuss core challenges facing life sciences – including The Financial Times, The Times, GenomeWeb, PharmaVOICE, Scientific Computing World, Drug Discovery Today and The Medicine Maker.

The Pistoia Alliance is now driving the industry agenda by identifying topics it needs to address and providing thought leadership through interviews and opinion articles. Other key initiatives, such as the Chemical Safety Library (CSL), have benefited from media exposure with over 800 new registrations following launch, and over 70 new reactions entered into the CSL – with 11% added from non-Pistoia Alliance members, demonstrating the reach of the campaign.

  • More than 70 pieces of coverage
  • Stories in The Financial Times and The Times
  • Generated inbound requests from media