First Campaign for the Prevention of Macula Diseases Successful Campaign for Novartis Ophthalmics
Inforpress, Spain + Portugal
Situation
Initially Inforpress wanted to promote Novartis Ophthalmics' public image, highlighting
its prestige and leadership. In order to fulfil this task, Inforpress was chosen
through an open request for tenders from other leading agencies to work out
the details of the creation, management, co-ordination, and development of the
campaign.
Objectives
The main objective was to increase the awareness of age-related macula degeneration
(AMD), a sickness that affects more than 25% of people over the age of 60 and
people whose age ranges from 30 to 50 if they have pathological short-sightedness,
and to stress the importance of going to an ophthalmologist to prevent these
pathologies.
Strategy
Essential to the development of this campaign, Inforpress had to contact health
departments, in particular in the Generalitat de Cataluña (the
government of the autonomous community of Catalunya).
Likewise, Inforpress needed to obtain the support of the medical community,
in order to provide this initiative credibility. One of the achievements of
Inforpress was to arrange for the collaboration of well-known doctors who made
presentations in different cities, leading to acceptance of the objectives by
the public, ophthalmologists, health departments and the media.
Actions
Using the slogan: "Don't lose eye contact with your world",
a mobile customer service center was placed in the heart of 8 cities: Barcelona,
Zaragoza, Bilbao, Oviedo, Madrid, Seville, Malaga, Valencia, and Santiago de
Compostela. During the campaign dates - April 22 to May 26, 2002 - eye tests
were given to 2,600 citizens, and more than 7,000 leaflets were distributed.
Results
As a result of this campaign for Novartis, Inforpress obtained:
positive attention to, and interest in, the illness among the media
public awareness of the seriousness of this illness
detection of problems related to this illness in 9% of the cases studied.
Impacts
The successes of this project included:
instantaneous results
broad exposure through media coverage.
More than 200 media appearances were arranged with national media, including
a national daily as well as other general print media, trade and consumer publications,
medical magazines, TV, radio and digital media.
The exposure in the local media was also outstanding, with more than 60 interviews
with experts in press, radio and television.
