You may not have heard of Emma Twin before today, but she has the rare distinction of being the star of a trans-Atlantic marketing initiative, including print and outdoor advertising in France as well as the United States.
On top of all of that, she’s not even real.
Instead, Emma is a character created to give a human face, as it were, to the potential applications of virtual twins in healthcare.
Emma Twin is the latest installment in Dassault Systèmes’ The Only Progress is Human initiative.
Launched in 2020, the project’s priority is to raise the public’s awareness about the role that virtual twins play in sustainable innovation across several areas including urbanization, water consumption and now healthcare.
While the French software company was founded in 1981, and its technology has been behind a number of advances in construction and manufacturing, its venture into the area of healthcare is more recent.
Dassault is now collaborating with biopharma and biotechnology companies, medical device manufacturers, research institutes and governmental regulatory agencies. The company is helping them develop and bring to market innovative health products and technologies while using the power of virtual twins to transform the patient experience.
Emma’s marketing blitz
The six-week media campaign starring Emma Twin focused on Dassault Systèmes’ healthcare work included print and digital advertisements in major publications (The New York Times chief among them), advertisements on podcasts, and outdoor advertising on the streets of Boston, New York City and Paris.
Central to the campaign is a short video where Emma introduces herself to the world as a “crash test dummy for healthcare.” We also learn that her days are filled with the inconveniences that come from always working when your job is to be a healthcare virtual twin. Apparently, this includes passing out in the lobby at your office.
Victoire de Margerie, VP corporate equity, marketing and communications at Dassault Systèmes, credits the French agency BETC with the humorous approach.
“The easiest way for us to appeal to a general audience and to explain the role virtual twins can have was to represent that concept through an avatar, and to put her in situations to showcase the many ways virtual twins can be used,” she explains.
Dassault was excited about this idea, de Margerie says, since the light tone seemed to be the best way to generate interest and curiosity from its target audience while also highlighting the organization’s capabilities.
“To explain virtual twin technology in less than two minutes, it was important to us to do it in a fun manner,” she adds.
The initiative’s target audience is primarily patients as well as their families and friends. However, de Margerie explains that Emma has a broader effect and that virtual twins in healthcare “benefit everyone.”
She notes the company’s goal is not simply to reach healthcare providers, hospitals and researchers who might already have some knowledge about virtual twins. Rather, the effort focused on underscoring their work and shifting the focus toward people outside of the traditional healthcare ecosystem.
The social avatar
Emma Twin’s marketing outreach has included her own LinkedIn page where people can follow her life as a virtual twin.
Clearly, she has a busy schedule and her profile confirms that.
Emma’s posts focus on clinical trials using Medidata Solutions, the reaction of her heart to different procedures in the Living Heart project, corneal transplants from CorNeat Vision, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease studies out of the Living Brain project, IASO drug administration and monitoring devices as well as tips on optimizing a home for older adults.
While Emma won’t be joining other social media platforms, de Margerie says the paid media campaign includes some posts on YouTube and Instagram.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, de Margerie sees this virtual avatar as an embodiment of a broader transition to a more individualized and human approach to healthcare.
“Healthcare is becoming more and more patient-centric,” she says. “Great innovation is made possible by the virtualization of tests and clinical trials. Emma’s contributions, such as participating in remote heart surgery simulations or testing cutting-edge corneal transplants, ultimately benefit real patients through the development of more personalized treatments.”
