Marketing

What the pharma industry can learn from In-Bed, Bayer Scherings award-winning online marketing campaign for Levitra.

Not too long ago, Dennis had a problem. To his great concern and that of his wife, Elaine, he suffered from erectile dysfunction (ED).

Today, however, after seeing a doctor and taking medication that addressed his symptoms, 40-something Dennis can now rise to the occasion. And hes even won a prize for it, too.

Dennis is not an actual person, but a cartoon character in the online marketing campaign In-Bed (www.in-bed.info), for Bayer Scherings erectile dysfunction drug Levitra.

Produced by British advertising agency Profero, the educational campaign has not only appealed to Internet users but also achieved what few in the industry ever deemed possible: In-Bed won the much-coveted Grand Prix awarded by Revolution magazine for outstanding digital marketing.
 
Due to the many legal regulations governing DTC advertising by pharma companies outside the US, ads often lack creativity. Not In-Bed, though.

According to the Revolution jury, The fact that Bayer Schering overcame these obstacles helped this campaign stand out from all others. And the fact that it took a unique and innovative approach to ED clinched the verdict.

 

Breaking the taboo

Although ED, a disorder that affects an estimated 152 million men worldwide, can be considered a natural phenomenon of ageing, it remains a taboo subject for many men, says Fabio Piva, global head of Bayer Scherings mens healthcare unit and one of the main players in the development of the campaign.

We wanted to deliver important information on it using a new approach that also triggers an open discussion for a wide audience.

The website, which functions as the hub of the campaign, provides lots of facts, figures, and advice, while also allowing users to communicate their own thoughts.

Then theres Dennis, the average guy who animates the educational portal.

Designed by the Oscar-winning Aardman Animations studio, the creators of Wallace & Gromit, he features in a series of eight 30-second black-and-white animated clips.

In a light-hearted fashion, these show his journey from denial and embarrassment to action. He talks to his wife and sees a doctor.

In the end, his medication-aided recovery leaves him my fine upstanding self again, as he puts it.

Reaching the target audience

To better reach the target audience of 40-plus males who spend more time on video-sharing channels than sports or news channels, Dennis metamorphosis was pushed out to YouTube and popular sex and health bloggers, explains Sam Walmsley, director of Profero Health.

The tactic to bring the campaign even to men who arent actively seeking erectile dysfunction content has proved highly successful.

YouTube alone has registered some 140,000 views.

Hoping to tap into viral marketing, the In-Bed makers produced another animated cartoon featuring Dennis after, as Walmsley puts it, he has got his mojo back.

The 45-second clip shows the now decidedly frisky middle-aged man and his wife putting kitchen and stairwell to romantic uses.

The idea was to have content living and breathing in other areas of the Web, Walmsley says, which fed back into the website.

Dealing with sensitivities

To deal with the sensitivity around erectile dysfunction, In-Bed also relied on placing real-people interviews on the website and social media channels, says Piva.

This included video Q&As with a doctor who answers the most essential questions about the whys and wherefores of ED.

The campaign makers even presented Dennis in a fictional TV conversation with world-famous TV sexologist Ruth Westheimer, who encourages him to talk openly about his problem.

This is, to my knowledge, the first campaign integrating so many new tools and ideas, says Piva.

To allow for ongoing improvement and customization of the campaign, the website also offers diagnosis tools (Do I have erectile dysfunction?), questionnaires, and videos.

Traffic to all of these is recorded and measured, providing feedback from users so the content can evolve and be updated.

This also helps In-Bed, which will be rolled out in several languages in the 45 countries worldwide where Bayer Schering sells its ED drug Levitra, to work effectively both at a global and a national level.

Pharma and social media

Given the general leeriness of pharma companies towards social media, it's not surprising that not everybody at Bayer Schering was behind the idea at the beginning.

Yet the insightful concept developed by Profero soon convinced us that they understood our customers and that we would succeed with this novel approach, says Piva.

We need to explore new and creative ways to market and inform about products, says Jrme Lemari, Levitra global brand manager.

We need to engage the various forms of new media where people, today and tomorrow, seek their information. We cant stop and stay with old tools. We need to challenge our organization and the agencies to provide cutting edge new ideas and trends early, to bring them to life faster than our competition.

Ad agencies agree. As an industry, we forget that social media covers a wide range of activities, argues Walmsley.

Just because we work in a restrictive environment doesnt mean we cant find an element of social media to fit with our marketing plans andmore importantlyprovide information in a place where our audiences are, and links back to our content.

Content is king

Content, in particular, is an area where pharma can play a more active role, Walmsley says.

For example, if you are developing a patient campaign, why do we as an industry just build a website that just has dry content, isnt updated, isnt promoted, and sits as a digital ghost town? If we are creating content that our audience will never find, how can we have a better relationship with them?

Especially in the pharma RX market, we need to be very creative to reach our end user, Lemari adds.

He believes the Revolution juryas well as visitors to the siteappreciated our honest and balanced approach in dealing with a delicate topic, far from stereotypes and easy jokes.

The effort to disseminate information via the Web has enormous potential.

According to a March 2010 study by the international marketing agency Digitas Health, 67 per cent of the Europeans surveyed said they trusted the information on health-related issues they found via social media sites.

In the US, the figure is 45 per cent.

Doctors in the European Union, too, want to see more use of these new platforms.

Half of European physicians surveyed by Digitas believed that pharmaceutical companies can and should offer digital services that can be integrated into their primary and secondary care services.
 
Thats twice the number in the US.
 
For more on physicians attitudes towards digital technology, see The Internet as a compliance and health management tool.

Granted, it may take a while before everyone jumps aboard the digital marketing advertising wagon.

If you look at pharma and all consumer product companies, we are all exploring, trying, failing, and trying anew, says Piva.

We need to learn how to establish and keep a conversation going in social media, where communication is different from traditional media. The audience expects a conversation, so you need to have something interesting and useful to say if you want to support it in a continuous fashion, which is the key to improve customer value.

For more on social media, see To Tweet or not to Tweet? That is the pharma marketers question, The upside of social media in marketing,  and How the pharma sector benefits from social media.
 
For more on eMarketing, see Making e-marketing effective.