Alimera Sciences
How unveiling the unforeseen emotional needs behind eye care treatments increased sales targets.
SERVICES: Insights
IMPACT AREA: Campaign & Brand Comms
TOOLS: Interviews
The Challenge
Despite conducting market research in 8 countries and acting upon those insights in terms of product framing - the projected sales target for a new eye treatment was nowhere near achievement in any of the 8 target markets.
The client was losing ground to the competition both in terms of market penetration and growth rates. The commercial, marketing and brand teams were charged with understanding the psychological barriers and engagers to their new product.
Industry Considerations
The client had developed a brand new product that negated patients having to have 36 monthly eye injections - thus challenging the traditional approach to eyesight loss due to diabetes. This was an opportunity to innovate in this health sector and revolutionise the treatment of eyesight loss. This would change the treatment solutions available to both patients and consultants and place the client brand at the forefront of innovative and less invasive eye care treatment.
What we did
-
Due to the nature of this brief / innovation and product development, the key requirement was to surface the psychological barriers and emotional engagers to this new health solution product. In the investigation phase, we conducted In-Depth Psychological Interviews with both patients and consultants to understand more about their needs (conscious and non conscious), behavioural drivers and cognitive barriers regarding eyesight loss and diabetes.
We then tested these emergent themes via our EMOTIX non conscious impact assessment tool - and from this had statistically supported evidence for what was important and unimportant for the communication of this new product intervention.
-
It was statistically verified that what consultants and patients ‘stated’ they needed from a health intervention product was completely unrelated from what they actually required from an emotional point of view.
Hence it was confirmed that the original market research methods had failed to discover the more hidden needs of the patient and consultant stakeholder audiences.
The new insights revealed it was not the ability to negate 36 monthly eye injections that created the most relevance/engagement for the target audiences - but that the new procedure enabled more time for patient/consultant conversations.
It was this unmet need for human interaction that was the main decisional driver in terms of the psychological benefits of the new product.
-
We worked with the marketing and brand teams to re-communicate the benefits of the new product based on the new psychological insights that we captured from our unique qualitative and quantitative assessments.
We emphasised more of the emotional benefits of the product and balanced that against the more pragmatic features of it.
As a result not only were the original sales targets now met in each of the 8 markets - but they were also significantly increased.
“Simon and his team at Innovationbubble recently completed some research for us in selected European markets so that we could understand what our customers really think about our brand versus our competitors. We felt our own research just wasn’t cutting edge, scientific enough or objective. This new research has allowed us to identify ways to reshape our key messages and refine our communication tactics so that we can be more impactful in every channel.”