The Campaign

Instead of taking the approach of previous medical device campaigns, which tended to focus on physician and dealer education through trade media and academic marketing, we came up with a campaign that engaged directly with the end users themselves. We devised a competition that connected MIT experts with aspiring artists and designers from across China. The direct connection exemplified the shift in access to information and reflected the empowerment of the end user. We played on the fact that “art & design” and “medical science” share the same pronunciation in Chinese, pairing these two seemingly distinct professions to create a new communications tool to aid public awareness and understanding of MIT. “The Beauty of Med-Art” was the first campaign of its kind to link Minimally Invasive Treatment with art and design, breaking down the barriers that were restricting understanding of the technology and providing a more accessible means of communication.

Execution

The Beauty of Med-Art was officially launched with the 2015 Boston Scientific Design Challenge, in partnership with Beijing Design Week, one of the most influential events in China’s arts calendar. We discovered artists and designers through a series of lectures, leading to over 150 initial design entries. 15 of these were then developed into full concepts through cross-disciplinary workshops. More than 500 physicians voted for their favourite finalists through an online exhibition and voting platform. Offline exhibitions were held to showcase the pieces, including a stall at the China Health Communication Conference, and an official ceremony unveiled the final four winners to media and other key stakeholders. In addition to the main events, journalists and key opinion leaders were engaged throughout the campaign via tailored press releases and in-depth stories, and a brochure of the artwork was created to tell the full story of each piece.

The Beauty of Med-Art garnered attention from both inside and outside the medical industry, resulting in: • 247 coverage items across general, medical and art media • 12 percent increase in search volume for “minimally invasive” on China’s dominant search engine Baidu • Topics and comments on MIT increased by 30 percent over the previous 5 months on social media On top of this, over the course of the campaign, procedures using Boston Scientific’s WATCHMAN™ technique for the Left Atrial Appendage Closure increased by 38%, indicating a shift in the public’s perception towards MIT.

The Situation

The Beauty of Med-Art used a creative concept to content with its audience with next to no media spend. Rather than focus on industry communications as was typical for the product, it used mass media to reach out to a larger audience, spreading the level of awareness.

The Strategy

Our research backed up claims from physicians that the Chinese public were largely skeptical of MIT and its “minimal” nature. For example, less than 1 in 5 eligible Chinese patients elect to undergo Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography, compared with 90% in developed countries. Seeing this misperception as a huge obstacle in the way of the public’s acceptance of MIT, we decided to turn it on its head, showing the public how MIT could be “minimal but significant.” We developed a platform through which aspiring designers and physicians could collaborate, creating visual pieces that conveyed the “minimal but significant” beauty of MIT and demonstrated its effectiveness as a solution to severe illness. We then used earned media channels to share the collaborative results with the public and medical professionals, adding authority to the campaign and its message.