Integrative Therapeutics (a division of Enzymatic Therapies Inc.) needed help to launch a new DNA screening service called Integrative Genomics, aimed at consumer end-users but marketed to them through doctors and other healthcare practitioners. The marketing challenge was to create a strategy that spoke consistently — although not simultaneously — to practitioners and patients alike. Because the service was not initially advertised directly to patients, MDs and practitioners needed flexible, persuasive, easy-to-use, prefabricated marketing materials to sell the product.
Therefore the marketing strategy fell into the area of “B2B2C” — Business-to-Business-to-Consumer, including B2B and B2C segments: dual Web sites, for example, targeted respectively at patient and practitioner. (View the original website via the Web Archive at: http://bit.ly/P53z2L ) Doctors also were addressed through direct mail, trade publication print ads and Web banners, among other media. Consumer awareness and interest were generated through Web banners, the consumer Web site and public relations initiatives.
Above: website for consumers and medical practioners. See archived live site at: http://bit.ly/Pk8j2
The materials developed for the practitioner to distribute to patients included print ad and PR templates, direct mail templates, brochures, and Web banners — all easy to personalize and print, and contained on a single CD-ROM. In addition, large colorful office posters were distributed with messaging addressed to patients.
An interesting feature of this campaign was the use of an unusual technique dubbed a “Radiomercial.” This consisted of three 30-minute infomercials disguised to sound like “live” listener call-in talk shows to an actual doctor. The “caller’s” questions were written by the agency and performed by actors and staffers in a recording session, as were the “answers” (performed a real M.D., Dr. Stephen Bittiker). Because of careful scripting, editing and sound effects, the pre-recorded shows sound virtually like authentic call-in talk shows. If an actual listener called the on-air number, he or she would reach an in-bound telemarketer who would offer to send more information.
