Project
Renessa^® Stand-Up to Urine Leaks

Client
Novasys Medical
Promotion and Education for Consumers and Healthcare Professionals

Medical Minds was asked to develop a program to drive women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI) to doctor’s offices to seek treatment with Renessa. The campaign we developed with Novasys Medical demonstrates the power of coordinated promotion and education in the introduction of a new treatment modality.

One in four women in the US has SUI, but only half of them talk with their doctors about it, either because they are too embarrassed or because they think SUI is normal after childbirth and with aging—they think they “just have to live with it”. Despite the fact that SUI has a significant impact on women’s health, causing skin rashes, urinary tract infections, depression, disruption in concentration at work, avoidance of sexual intimacy, and lack of exercise that can also lead to weight gain, only 10% to 20% of these women receive treatment. In addition, physicians believe that women want surgery, but in actuality the vast majority of women do not receive treatment because they don’t want surgery. The Renessa program was developed to help bridge this communication gap.

Objectives

• Develop, test, and refine a consumer campaign to drive women to seek treatment with Renessa
• Communicate that SUI is a medical condition that, left untreated, can have serious potential consequences
• Increase awareness of this newly available, noninvasive treatment that can hugely improve a woman’s health and quality of life
• Support adoption of Renessa by the healthcare community via promotion and education
  
  

Target Audiences

• Working moms
• Medicare-aged women
• Urologists and urogynecologists

Tactical Execution
Both consumers and physicians were targeted. Multiple direct marketing channels (print ads, advertorials, radio, banner ads, a webinar, a product website) focused on letting women know that they owed it to themselves not to continue suffering from this condition, and to get it taken care of quickly and easily with Renessa.

In addition, we developed a core educational presentation for symposia at the American Urogynecology Society and other meetings.

Results
Since the consumer campaign was in the public domain, it generated a buzz among physicians (and their wives) in the local communities.

An excellent consumer response was generated in a market test in Pensacola, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami in a 7-month period:

• 16,700 unique visitors to patient websites
• 520 calls to a call center
• 640 calls to doctors’ offices
  

Specially designed metrics supported selection of the most cost-effective vehicles and halved the cost per call to doctor’s offices. Each vehicle had its own unique URL and telephone number, which allowed us to track each web visit and each call back to the original media vehicle. Calls to physicians were monitored via a physician locator and analytical system designed by Thimble River.

Over 600 women completed surveys on patient websites:

• 70% said they were more likely to talk with a doctor about their SUI after visiting the website
• 45% said they were “likely” or “very likely” to seek treatment with Renessa within the next 3 months
  

The surveys also showed that we were reaching our target audience and identified common concerns that supported development of:

• Advertorials in newspapers to address common issues
• Appropriate website content to educate and inform women about the benefits of Renessa treatment