Challenge

Diabetes management is experiencing a deep industry transformation through technology, innovation and digitalization of the patient journey through services like telehealth and digital pharmacies. Ascensia was behind in its category in adopting a digital approach to reach in a way that speaks to the modern health consumer or health care professional outside of print, their primary legacy channel. They needed to retain their current customers and prevent attrition, whilst also growing their share of market with limited resources compared to competitors.

Ascensia & Contour were established market brands but were losing consumers and market share to the competition that started dedicating large marketing budget ahead of major structural changes in the industry. Dentsu health helped Ascensia act like a challenger brand by being highly efficient with our media investment to overcome the Share Of Voice (SOV) gap and gain new customers to grow the brand.​

Solution

We built a digital-first and patients-first marketing approach based on a highly sophisticated segmentation of patient audiences by precisely understanding the new journey mapping through a mix of data and research and an audience-first planning and buying activation across all media channels, including social media, native advertising, connected TV and Online Video. M1 Audiences has been key to quickly scale this strategy in U.S. markets. ​

To support this innovative media strategy for this category and for our client, we designed and built “One Team Ascensia”, an agile team seamlessly uniting both the Directional Team (strategic planning) and Delivery Team (performance media). We also created centers of excellence around digital to drive business forward, enabled cross-network collaboration for new ways of thinking and implemented highly integrated strategic planning led by detailed performance insights to ensure maximum media effectiveness​.

Dentsu health was the first in the category to put a strong focus on optimizing lower funnel activity, not only through continuous keyword optimization but also with a strong long-term commitment to SEO improvements and cementing a strategy to future proof the business for a digital-first customer. ​

We worked with the Ascensia ecommerce team and wider business to build on legacy systems to improve their focus on online as a channel to drive sales and demonstrate its value in a category that has traditionally been dominated by offline, in-store sales. This led to Ascensia opting to feature their products on Amazon and Walmart websites, which has opened up new avenues of sales and media attribution from our strategic planning.

Results

Ascensia re-gained its number two spot in the category, even-though they were outspent by three out of five competitors in the top five. ​

Dentsu health delivered large improvements in media efficiencies, lowering cost per impressions (CPMs) for reaching customers through digital by more than 80% compared to traditional print and decreased overall click costs by 45% through SEO efficiencies, keyword optimization and continuous ad copy refresh to test and learn