NEW YORK: Pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer is utilising "hyper-connected" mothers on various social media platforms to encourage advocacy of its children's brands.

The company partnered with New York-based Smiley360, an online community made up of members keen to try new products and share their feedback, to identify and seed a community of 20,000 such mothers with children in the target age range for Children's Advil, Pfizer's over-the-counter medication for kids.

Pina Hornyak, senior consumer engagement manager at Pfizer, told delegates at a November 2013 ad:tech New York conference: "The average [number of] connections – so this addresses the scale question – that each mom had was about 632. So this was way above the normal average of social connections that people have."

"And they were cross-platform," she added. "They were bloggers, they were tweeters, they had Facebook fans, they were on Pinterest. We had people using various channels."

Pfizer reached out to this audience in two waves, divided into 10,000 moms apiece. Every selected consumer was sent a "mission kit" – or what Hornyak called an "exclusive brand experience" – that incorporated a full-sized product sample, a dosing chart, a brochure, coupons, and items like branded magnets.

Alongside the associated marketing collateral, all the packs contained a "sharing guide" that showed recipients how to spread their views on the web. "The sharing guide was meant to prompt conversations, prompt mom to share out about not only how Children's Advil helped with her kid's fever… but, beyond that, how it made her feel as a mom to be able to provide that comfort," Hornyak explained.

In a bid to save busy mothers' time, Smiley360 even had created a tool whereby contributors could enter a review, anecdote, or opinion, and then publish the identical content across their various social media accounts with the single click of a button. "It helps really scale out fast," Hornyak said.

In outlining the results, Hornyak reported that Children's Advil secured 40,000 reviews from its panel, equating to two per recipient of its kits. "We wanted millions and millions, but that was a good starting point for the size of our brand," she said.

Data sourced from Warc