SOURCE: @LILMIQUELA / INSTAGRAM REELS

NMDP, a global non-profit partnered with AI influencer Lil Miquela to share her leukemia journey with her 2.3 million instagram followers.

AI influencers have officially stepped into the world of healthcare marketing. This summer, NMDP (formerly Be the Match) — a global nonprofit focused on cell therapies and cell donations, tapped one of the biggest AI influencers in the world to raise awareness about leukemia.

Lil Miquela, officially known as Miquela Sousa, is an AI influencer owned by Dapper Labs with a whopping 2.3 million followers. She reportedly made over $10 million in revenue from brand partnerships.

One of the biggest AI influencers today, Miquela has worked with brands like Prada, Dior, Samsung and others. While she’s known for her fun bubbly content, she developed leukemia this past summer and documented her journey for her instagram followers.

Her diagnosis was part of a paid healthcare campaign with NMDP, who said they partnered with the AI influencer to raise awareness about the condition, particularly among 18-to-24 year-olds.

“It’s harder to break through and to garner attention, particularly from 18-to-24 year-olds,” said Erica Jensen, the SVP of Innovation, Strategy and Marketing at NMDP. “We really started thinking about what else we could do and saw the data on AI influencers and landed on that.”

Jensen added they were drawn to working with an AI influencer because of their large existing following and connections they had already built with their targeted demographics.

The campaign also raised awareness about blood stem cell donations among that age range, and how the donations can positively impact the lives of those with blood conditions.

To achieve this, the NMDP team worked with the team at Dapper Labs to train Miquela on data and stories from real blood cancer patients, so that she would be able to emulate the experiences patients face when sharing her diagnosis.

“Even though she’s an AI influencer, the experience she went through would be fairly known and common to patients and what they actually experience,” added Jensen.

In addition to showcasing her journey, Miquela also partnered with influencer Jojo Siwa on a couple of Instagram posts to talk about signing up to be part of the patient donor registry. The collaboration was a success — and in total, garnered NMDP over 5 million organic impressions off Miquela’s social channels.

The posts with Siwa also exposed the campaign to a total of 11.3 million Instagram followers, and 46.1 TikTok followers, which Jensen considered a success.

“The two of them together were really powerful,” said Jensen.

Ethical concerns

While the numbers show that the campaign was a success, there was still some concern among the audience around the ethics of an AI influencer developing a health disease that is so sensitive for many.

In anticipation of this, the NMDP designed the campaign around the slogan “She’s not real, but the crisis is.” They were also sure to add text to videos where Miquela is talking about her journey clarifying that she is in fact, AI.

The team also featured some posts that included real patient and donor voices.

Despite this, Jensen noted that they did get some backlash from audiences.

“We did receive some comments of people jumping in and saying that this is not honoring the patient experience,” said Jensen. “There were also some people — her followers — who did not realize that she was AI.”

However, she said the tide against the campaign turned quite quickly, as others who had either lived with blood diseases or had loved ones who did responded to these comments, focusing on the importance of raising awareness — even if it’s done through AI.

“We knew we couldn’t jump in because the community has to be able to moderate itself and then seeing that tide over with real stories helped,” said Jensen.

She also added that it was definitely a learning curve for her team to work with an AI influencer compared to putting together a traditional healthcare campaign, particularly because the team for the influencer had to be given very specific narratives and data in order to train her.

Plus, it also required a lot of collaboration with the team who trained her, as they would give feedback on whether narratives worked with the AI.

“Even though she is an AI, you need to take time to understand her personality. And the team who works with her understands that. You gotta make sure that it feels authentic to them and to their platform,” she said.

Heerea Rikhraj MM+M

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