30 Million couples in India are infertile, but only 5% approach clinicians. Infertility issues are considered as Taboo and most often the inability to conceive is blamed on the woman. Surveys suggest couples wait for an avg 14.4 months before they seek any help . Few directly go to an Obs Gyn & may after multiple unsuccessful treatments are then referred to an IVF specialist. In the bargain, lots of patients get lost and don't reach at right place in right time.
Brief: Devise an outreach awareness program using digital to make couples aware about fertility issues, the fact that it does not just affect women and direct them to IVF centers.
Objective: Target the 95% who are afraid to approach an IVF clinic. The main challenge and objective was to break the stigma and get people to talk about it.
Keeping in mind the audience and the situation around infertility, we used a 4 pronged strategy - Awareness, Education, Consideration and Conversion. To get to the correct audience, we used filters like age, location, life stage (married) and online behavior to identify and create an audience pool. This audience was then directed to an interactive website (parentsoffertility.com) via a web & mobile integrated campaign which humanised content and used engaging educative formats like videos, blogs, Fertility Quiz, Facebook slideshows and infographics. SEM, Contextual Marketing and Re-marketing was deployed to stay relevant and ensure top-of-mind recall with the audience.
The first part of the campaign ("It's About Time") was directed at those who were stalling visiting a clinic and encouraged them to take action (building on the 'FOMO i.e. Fear of Missing Out' aspect that plagues most millenials). The second part ("Infertility Can be Dealt With") adopted a supportive approach to give hope to infertile couples. To reach the right audience, targetting filters like age, location, lifestage (married) and online behavior were used. This audience was driven to the website via SEM, Social Promotions, Native Ads and Remarketing. Social platform content helped build context & relevance. The website captured appointment bookings (via an LMS), and encouraged unrestricted dialogue (via call centre + chat functionality). Thus, Parents of Fertility became the link that connected infertile couples to fertility clinics. Farah Khan, an Indian celebrity was brought on board to help amplify the message.
The campaign resulted in a change of behaviour with poeple opening about infertility problems. We received over 8000 inbound calls and 600 chat queries. We saw a 37% increase in appointment bookings across many IVF clinics. With over 4,81,61,000 impressions, we earned media worth 1 Million USD.
