Chronic Rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is a chronic inflammatory condition of the nose. It affects millions of people but is hardly known.
CRSwNP sufferers may experience a wide variety of disease symptoms that negatively impact their daily lives, including reduced sleep, constant headaches, mental dysfunction and most distressingly, a loss of smell.
Since many CRSwNP symptoms are similar to sinusitis or a common headache, the disease can be easily missed. People silently suffer for months or years without a diagnosis or the correct treatment.
With over 3 Million people suffering in Germany alone, Sanofi was looking to raise awareness of the condition and encourage potential patients to speak to their doctors about diagnosis and treatment, rather than suffer in silence.
Objectives
Raising awareness of the disease and its symptoms
Drive education and empathy
Create an online social community for sufferers
Encourage people to seek diagnosis
Audience
Healthcare professionals and the general public
To reach these, we also targeted media, the press and social media
Relevance of Approach
We needed to reach people who wouldn’t know they had a problem and to start a conversation about a disease nobody had heard of. We therefore had to get everyone thinking about their sense of smell, and how devastating it would be to lose it.
Approach & Channels
Studies show that of all our senses, the sense of smell ranks last in terms of how important people find it. In fact, it was completely underestimated.
People usually only realise the importance of smell after losing it. By turning people’s noses into a channel for our communication we gave people a vivid first-hand experience of what could be lost, creating an emotional response and spreading awareness.
Execution
On World Fragrance Day, we released the first ever ‘patient stories in scent’ to members of the press and the medical community in a live experience event.
A campaign film was created and shared during the experiment as well as by influencers.
Influencers suffering from CRSwNP shared the campaign along with their own ‘scent stories’ and experiences.
An Instagram channel was created which was dedicated to educating patients about CRSwNP. This created and empowered the first CRSwNP community online.
Online Hub created for CRSwNP, including information and tools, self assessment and testing criteria and ‘find a doctor’ function for people who might be suffering to locate their nearest Ear, Nose & Throat specialist.
Scent of Life is the first-ever disease-awareness campaign that tells patient stories through scent. It conveys the significance of smell as a key element of the human experience and uses its immediate and emotional impact to engage the audience on an olfactory level.
Scents became the integral communication tool, engaging the audience with the primary organ the disease was affecting: the nose. Thus, connecting a scent to our cause and a disease.
13,600+ people have taken self-tests so far
195+M Reach in digital and print press
175 Pieces of coverage across lifestyle & medical publications
10.3 Million Paid Media Impressions
Website Visits
CTR 96,236
109,031 Website clicks
29,151 Unique Users
48.000 Sessions
2,487% increase in sessions and 3,515% increase in users during campaign compared to prior month
Self Assessment Tests
1,550 Users
1,658 Sessions
Film Views
5.8 Million Campaign Film Views
New Instagram Channel for CRSwNP
1.161 Followers
30 Feed posts
50 Story posts
1.4 Million Impressions
