2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Psoriasis is a disease that makes your immune system attack your body. More than a million sufferers have it covering over 75% of their body. Over 60% of these sufferers also live with serious depression and think seriously about killing themselves. Humira is a drug that can dramatically reduce the symptoms and help people live normal lives again, but dermatologists don’t prescribe it, because they often don’t realise the depth of the psychological trauma caused by Psoriasis. We needed to find an innovative and unconventional way to speak directly to these dermatologists.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We created our own direct mailer to target dermatologists in their own offices. We went out and personally interviewed Psoriasis sufferers then hand wrote over 400 letters based on their true stories, and sent them to dermatologists across the region so they could hear the stories of suffering straight from the patients themselves. We researched famous suicide letters, then designed and hand-crafted every aspect of the anguished handwritten copy, to make it look and feel authentic enough to catch the dermatologists off-guard and drive our message home.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Even though this hard-hitting personal campaign has just launched it’s had a big impact. We have seen a 75% response rate so far and dermatologist’s attitudes around the region are starting to change.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

We needed to speak directly to the dermatologists but we knew that pharmaceutical drugs couldn't be advertised in the traditional media in the region. So we developed an innovative strategy to get around the serious restrictions by targeting the doctors directly. This led to unconventional direct mail idea. After interviewing 400 sufferers and hand writing these letters, we delivered them directly to the dermatologists offices across the region to catch them off guard and help them realise that the power to change and even save their patients lives was in their hands.