A top Fortune 50 medical supply company had never advertised before. While its name was widely known, the services it provided were not. And its brand perception was at best neutral. To rectify this situation, T1 Media was hired to get the company’s offerings noticed. The client wanted a print-only campaign to run throughout the year.
Strategic Media Research
Presented with a very limited budget to reach all medical providers, T1 Media conducted a proprietary analytics study to identify key strategic variables that could be leveraged to drive performance. The research identified who exactly was the most important audience to reach thereby allowing resources to be consolidated to key decision makers. This analysis also found that the medical community, particularly key influencers, relied on various types of media, not just vertical trade publications. Findings also demonstrated that the company’s competitors were well funded and committed to advertising long term. These components made for an adjustment to the core of the original plan desired by the client.
Strategic Media Recommendation
Research indicated that a multi-platform media program would be more successful than a single-platform campaign. The agency recommended that the campaign be driven by online medical thought-leadership media partners and supported with vertical trade print to sustain visibility. To drive visibility in key medical and teaching facilities and among key medical leadership, two additional high-profile tactics were deployed: National Public Radio in key markets with a high concentration of medical facilities. To capture visibility during major medical conventions where the medical leadership community was known to frequent, a fourth level of media exposure was recommended to create brand “events” using high-profile, out-of-home marketing tactics, such as billboards, airport dioramas and buses to surround this audience while in market for the convention.
Year-round support was not as critical as demonstrating proof of concept for management to appropriately fund the campaign at competitive spending levels. Shortening the campaign to three months would provide impact across platforms to ensure success.
T1 Media further recommended before and after attitude and usage studies to validate the campaign’s ROI to management so that future efforts would be funded.
Results
The efforts generated the highest lift in overall familiarity among the company’s peer group (+9 percent in three months). Purchase intent also grew by 10 percent at the expense of its competitors, which declined on average by 33 percent. Positive attributes rose by 60 percent in three months and aligned with the selected media. A year-round campaign was funded moving forward as the product-management team had concrete ROI results to demonstrate “soft assets” in brand-equity value to back the campaign.