Leading healthcare communications agency, H4B Manchester, is celebrating a prestigious gold award for its powerful The World vs.MS campaign at the Communiqué Awards, held last Thursday 6 July at London’s Grosvenor House hotel, Park Lane. This ceremony marked the 20th year for the highly respected awards.

Part of the Havas Lynx group of creative agencies based on Manchester’s Princess Street, H4B fought off stiff competition in the Excellence in Social Media Strategycategory of the awards. Commenting on the initiative’s success, one Communiqué judge said:

“The World vs.MS was one of the best campaigns we’ve seen – we need more work like this to raise everyone else’s standards.”

The Communiqué Awards recognise and reward outstanding work in healthcare communications across local, European and international markets. Each year, a changing panel of over 100 industry experts and leaders, drawn from advocacy, agency, pharma, professional services and regulators take part in a rigorous judging process, championing the highest possible standards to identify winners that showcase the very best in healthcare communications.

To win a Communiqué Award means that programmes or initiatives, individuals and teams must together have truly made a difference – to patients, to stakeholders and influencers, and to the reputation of our industry itself.

The World vs.MS is an ambitious social movement which utilised the power of social media to unite the world in the fight against multiple sclerosis (MS). By sharing the real, every day challenges faced by millions of people living with the burden of this incurable disease, the agency set out to not only reveal, but also to tackle these challenges head on.

Through an intense social media campaign that brought the MS community together, and targeted the brightest minds in the innovation industries, The World vs.MS inspired anyone and everyone to think of life changing ideas that could help those living with this neurological condition.

This award-winning campaign was created for Sanofi Genzyme, the specialty care global business unit of Sanofi, focused on rare diseases, multiple sclerosis, immunology and oncology.

Over the course of ten months, the campaign made 23,000,000 social impressions, increased Sanofi Genzyme’s social following by 2000%, tripled their share of voice, held the first European MS hack event of its kind and bridged the gap between the MS and innovation communities on an unprecedented scale.

Commenting on the agency’s prestigious award win, H4B Manchester’s Creative Director, Helen Godley, said:

“We’re really proud to be recognised at these important industry awards. We were determined to make this a truly patient-centric campaign from the offset. Achieving our objective meant engaging both the MS and innovation communities: for us it was all about brains helping brains.

The success of The World vs.MS is something the whole team here in Manchester are extremely passionate about. We want to thank everyone who engaged and supported us through year one of the initiative and we’re excited to continue working in partnership with Sanofi Genzyme and the MS community as we move forward into our second year.”