Case studies Bayer

In an innovative campaign that spanned two years, we aligned a celebrity rock band with a new birth control product so that Bayer could promote awareness of a rare medical condition that their product could treat.

Bayer challenged us to inform 18-24 year old female consumers about YAZ, a new medicine to treat Pre-Menstural Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a little known medical condition. They wanted us to deliver a message of female empowerment that would drive consumers to learn more about PMDD and its treatment.

Our insight was that we could engage consumers best through music and pop-culture icons. We needed to overcome the industry taboo around birth control and adhere to restrictions on entertainment and pharma marketing.

Our solution was to partner YAZ with 'The Veronicas': a globally successful girl-band. Cover version of their songs were used to masthead an empowerment campaign that was shared through free song downloads, micro web-sites and custom videos delivering health and wellness messages. Partnerships with Yahoo! and In Touch magazine led to dedicated web channels and skins and ROCKTOBERFEST, a hip NYC live concert by The Veronicas. Massive weekly promotions and online exposure led to stories on ET and Access Hollywood ..

The YAZ campaign was ground breakingly successful. Results from 2007 showed that Yaz achieved a high market penetration. 'We're not gonna take it' was traded over 100,000 times and streamed from the Veronica's MySpace Page 350,000 times. Over 3,000 women asked YAZ to be their friends on a dedicated MySpace page and 300,000 became friends of The Veronica's page. This generated 42,000 visitors to the PMDD microsite during the 12-week promotional period. On this site 11% clicked through to understand pmdd.com.