Eli Lilly & Co. is integrating its Breast Cancer Awareness Month message into Good Morning America and GMA Day, the first crossover between those two programs.
The deal illustrates how since being restructured last year, Disney’s ad sales operation is able to create opportunities for advertisers to reach targeted audiences in relevant content across dayparts and even networks.
Related: Disney Reorganizes Ad Sales, Names Top Execs
As part of its campaign to raise awareness of metastatic breast cancer, Lilly is launching what it calls the Thriver Movement as part of its “More for MBC” initiative.
Lilly is working with MBC activist and Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino and celebrity trainer and yoga instructor Anna Kaiser on the project.
On Thursday Good Morning America live in Times Square, Kaiser will lead a group yoga lesson and introduce a new Thriver pose. Later during GMA Day, Sorvino and one of Kaiser’s colleagues, Kat Baldasare of AKT Studios, will continue discussing Lilly’s metastatic breast cancer campaign and demonstrate the yoga move.
Lilly is calling on viewers to take pictures and videos of themselves doing the pose and posting it to social media. For every pose, Lilly will donate $100, up to $225,000.
Lilly said it chose to launch the Thriver Movement on GMA because it wanted to empower the voices of the Metastatic Breast Cancer community on a national scale during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “These are strong and thriving voices that need to be heard, and we wanted to find a meaningful, authentic way to educate the public.,” said Amy Meadows, senior advisor, U.S. Oncology Consumer Marketing, Eli Lilly
“The integration between GMA and GMA Day is a seamless content experience that allows us to reach both the morning news audience, as well as the afternoon lifestyle audience to ensure the voices of the MBC community break through to as many viewers as possible - via broadcast, online and social integration,” Meadows said.
The campaign’s social component will help Disney and Lilly measure its effectiveness, said Jerry Daniello, VP, entertainment brand solutions for Disney Advertising Sales. The live nature of the shows will also make it possible to update news about the campaign in future episodes, he added.
Looking at Good Morning America; Live with Kelly and Ryan; The View; GMA Day; Jimmy Kimmel Live and our traditional news programming,these formats lend themselves to tell stories that feature sponsorship, intermixed with pre-produced elements to help tell a brand’s story. Especially in a live daily environment, he said.
Related: ABC to Expand ‘Good Morning America’ to three hours
GMA Day had its debut on Sept. 10, replacing The Chew in ABC’s daytime lineup. Airing at 1p.m. ET, It is hosted by Michael Strahan and Sara Haines.
“With the launch of GMA Day, we’re really excited to be able to offer our clients a platform where we can reach the early morning audience and the daytime audience with the sames message,” said Daniello. “It’s a great opportunity for us to not just focus on offering a great partnership in one show, but being able to spread that message throughout the day.
This is the first integrated campaign that’s aired on the two shows--and the first for a pharmaceutical company--but Daniello said advertisers whose marketing strategy has them advertising in both early morning and daytime have been buying commercials in both shows.
“There is a lot of crossover and In every conversation we’re having with clients that come in interested in partnering with Good Morning America, we’re extending the conversation into how that opportunity could look if they further invested in GMA Day,” he said.
By selling across the entire Disney TV portfolio, the company is able to find more content that fits a client’s objective than it could with a single show. “That has been an underlying strategy of linking similar content together to create extended opportunities for our clients,” he said.
In a noteworthy example of the strategy, e-Bay and Buick last season were integrated with different executions in black-ish on ABC and grown-ish on Freeform.
“We’ve definitely seen success with these kind of crossover partnerships,” Daniello said.
“As long as the television, media and content industry continue to evolve, advertising needs to transform as well,” he said. Whether you’re working on linear, digital, VOD or, social media, “it’s all a combination of content, day parts, executions, and of course the client. It’s a constant evolution.”
