The Brief

Faced with formidable DTC regulatory environment in South Korea, Baxter Korea turned to a new marketing solution to heighten awareness and selection of home Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) system—a data-enabled communications program to patients with Chronic Kidney Disease facing dialysis modality decision. Research revealed key barriers: (1) lack knowledge of modality options; (2) HCP comfort level with Hemodialysis (HD) and (3) high awareness of HD, exacerbated by a correspondingly low awareness of PD. CKDPlan, a content-rich unbranded site and ongoing RM/outbound telemarketing program, was designed to communicate with patients about treatment options—HD, Ambulatory PD, Home PD, and kidney transplant.

Creative Execution

“CKDPlan: Because life with CKD requires planning” was designed to emotionally resonate with patients overwhelmed by future. Competitive sites were data dump, overwhelming patients with entire spectrum of disease information, fueling sense of futility. Site had to be friendly, reassuring, and content metered out in digestible doses. To enhance usability for TA, site offered (1) bigger fonts to help them read better, (2) above-the-fold content on secondary pages to minimize scroll, and (3) a simple two-step registration to capture visitors while capture information for segmentation. CKDPlan name and visual pneumonic of stairs, was designed to suggest a pathway to follow.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Program goal: educate patients on modality options especially PD; increase PD awareness to 40%, preference to 20%. How? (1) Recruit targets by persuading HCPS conducting CDK seminars to introduce program. 1,414 patients opted in through seminar, and to ease online registration for older TA, innovative “web key” USB-enabled brochure was handed out. (2) Engage patients with relevant information: 18 month out, maintaining kidney health; 6 to 12 months, working with medical team; 3 to 6 months from dialysis, urgency of modality decision. (3) Draw repeat traffic to Website (over 50%) with diet/lifestyle content. Modality options educated to patients while revisit.

Results

(1) Program participants: over a year, 1,994 patients registered to the program, with 580 website registration and 1,414 seminar opt-ins. Seminar contained a section on the treatment to educate participants, who also received reminder follow up calls. (2) PD exposure: on website, 1,692 pages views on PD information and 915 plays of patient interviews occurred. (3) PD awareness & preference: through survey on PD awareness and preference to website registrants, 50% understand what PD is and of those, 63% answered PD would be best fit their lifestyle. (4) In works, post-dialysis survey of registered patients to determine more granular ROI.