When the New York-based PR shop Noonan/Russo Communications was vying in January 1995 to win an account to promote a drug manufactured by Rhone-Poulenc Rorer to treat bed wetting, those who worked on the competitive bid picked an atypical way to woo the drug licensor. Instead of presenting a plan that would elevate the brand in the marketplace, Noonan/Russo selected a far more personal approach that ended up netting 51,209,150 media impressions and record-breaking sales.
"We had team members pose as parents of bed wetters and we went to doctors and pharmacists to ask them questions about what reatments were available and what we found was that there was very little information out there," said Kathryn Metcalfe, senior vice president, product communications, for Noonan/Russo.
But it was that lack of information - the absence of any definitive industry clearinghouse for facts about bedwetting (what's referred to in the medical community as primary nocturnal enuresis) - that gave Noonan/Russo the angle for the campaign, which has grown to $800,000.
"We worked on our presentation for a month and when we went in, we didn't give them a brand sell. We gave them a concept," Metcalfe added.
"Many of the agencies we saw hung their campaigns on one single theme," recalled Rhone-Poulenc Rorer product manager John Robert George. "But Noonan/Russo demonstrated two things -- research and an unconventional means of research."
"This wasn't a campaign built on smoke and mirrors," agreed Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Marketing Director Phil Imperial. "It came down to substance and Noonan/Russo had a campaign built on succinct messages."
And that message, according to Metcalfe, wasn't based on the tactic of building a lot of hype around Rhone-Poulenc Rorer's nearly nine-year-old drug Desmopressin Acetate (DDAVP), which is prescribed to combat bed wetting. Instead, it centered around the lack of information about bed wetting as well as on the abundance of misinformation tied to RRP's primary audiences --doctors, parents and pharmacists.
Instead of taking a pure business approach, Noonan/Russo became an advocate for families battling this somewhat hush-hush problem. And they set out to charter a course to debunk the myths surrounding bed wetting, an ailment that is estimated to affect 5 million to 7 million American children.
"We weren't selling a product --we were selling the idea to `Go get treatment,'" Metcalfe said. "We personalized it (bed wetting) and brought it to the human level. We found our greatest competitor was apathy (in the medical community) but never in my wildest dreams did I think we could achieve this level of success."
The success Metcalfe is referring to includes an approximate 25 percent growth in U.S.-generated DDVAP (a medication generating about $95 million worldwide, annually) sales, which both George and Imperial link to Noonan/Russo's PR campaign. "In terms of impressions, based on cost per thousand, the industry average is $3. Our cost per thousand, per consumer, was.4 of one cent. And that was partially because we looked at the media as any form people use to communicate and we didn't leave anything out - the Internet, journals, newsletters, radio, television, trade publications and newspapers on the regional, state and national level."
And once again, the media coverage Noonan/Russo tried to generate was consistent with the tone of the overall campaign: Push information --not a product.
Although the campaign has been a resounding success, there was one stumbling block that provides a lesson for all PR practitioners. During the initial part of the campaign, Noonan-Russo realized that everyone at RPR didn't quite grasp the purpose of PR.
"One of the cornerstones of the campaign with RPR came in mid-March when the product managers at RPR said to us: "What is PR? And what are we doing here?... We literally threw out the agenda for that meeting and started from zero," Metcalfe said.
(Noonan-Russo, Kathryn Metcalfe; RPR, Phil Imperial and John Robert George, 610/454-8478)
How The Campaign Was Structured
- Noonan/Russo conducted research on urology-related meetings and after locating a doctor in Denmark performing genetic research on the problem, the PR agency promoted his studies in the mainstream media in the United States;
- They partnered with the National Kidney Foundation to circulate information about bed wetting and what therapy options are available;
- They promoted Dr. Greene's House Calls,
http://www.drgreene.com, an online information site hosted by Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician and instructor at Stanford University's medical school, as well as online chats with experts; - They found children (who suffer from bed wetting) who were willing to speak to reporters at local newspapers;
- They put together a Public Service Announcement with Michael Landon Jr., who shares his experiences as a former bed wetter;
- They circulated press kits which contained information from the NKF; bed wetting do's and don'ts; and a test-your-knowledge quiz; and
- They worked with Walt Disney [DIS] to create a cartoon character for a video, which will debut at RPR's national sales meeting in February, that chronicles one boy's problem with bed wetting.