Boston Scientific Direct-to-Patient Campaigns

Activating and Inspiring Men to Take Action for Sensitive Health Conditions

Merryman Communications works with Boston Scientific across its Urology and Pelvic Health business, including creative consumer education campaigns for often sensitive health conditions like erectile dysfunction (ED). It’s a topic most men don’t want to think about, and they certainly don’t want to admit that they struggle with it. Yet, ED often can be a sign of an underlying medical condition such as diabetes or heart disease and proper medical care is extremely important.

Here are three different campaigns we created with our client to generate awareness of ED as a medical condition and drive consideration of Boston Scientific’s penile implant solutions.

Happy Partners Agree - Inspiring Men to Take Action

Based on the key insight that men are motivated by satisfying their partner, Merryman Communications created a patient awareness campaign to inspire men to take action and seek treatment. The campaign targeted ED patients and their partners, and sought to activate those who have tried other treatments but haven’t found a long-term solution to consider a penile implant.

The team knew from market research that focusing on the end result (satisfied partners) was more likely to drive action among men. They also knew that a powerful message for men was that Boston Scientific’s implants had very high ratings among both partners and patients. Our creative development process landed on core visuals and a catchy headline that was used throughout the multi-channel campaign.

The Happy Partners Agree campaign was implemented via programmatic ads, radio ads, a compelling animated patient video and robust social media content that leveraged the campaign visuals as well as patient testimonial videos.

Women Influencers Advocating for Men with ED

Influencer campaigns can be an incredibly powerful tactic, but also challenging for a sensitive topic like ED. Not many male influencers want to talk about ED and treatment options on their personal channels. Therefore, Merryman Communications leveraged the key insight that women are typically the healthcare decision-makers in the household and are more willing to discuss these sensitive topics. The team developed an influencer campaign targeted at women to empower them to speak with their partners about ED.

The team worked with three key influencers who reached the target female, 50+ audience.

Men’s Health Month Print and Radio Campaigns

Merryman Communications found that while media understood the importance of education on ED, they didn’t want to feature stories about it, given its sensitive nature and the lack of appropriate images to show. This even held true for paid integrations with local television stations. With this in mind, Merryman Communications turned to a paid approach with print and radio outlets to illustrate this sensitive subject in a consumer-friendly way and present various treatment options, including penile implants.

The team capitalized on Men’s Health Month (June) and created materials for English- and Spanish-speaking audiences that included stats about ED and a call to action to visit EDCure.org (or EDCure.org/ES). We secured paid placements using MAT releases, audio news releases and an infographic. We also leveraged the assets on Boston Scientific’s social media channels.