Brief Explanation

THE CHALLENGE Australia is in the midst of a silent epidemic. 3.5 million people are living with some form of hearing loss, however 85% do nothing about it. As the global leader in implantable hearing solutions, Cochlear's biggest competitor is not a rival brand - it's the inaction of their potential customers. In denial about how bad their hearing is or dismissing it as part of "growing old", many go untreated for years. THE OBJECTIVES Against this backdrop, Cochlear launched their first consumer campaign, aiming to: Objective 1: Attract qualified leads into the Cochlear sales funnel. KPI 1: Increase leads by at least 20%, over 12 months. Objective 2: Get people to engage with the Cochlear brand and consider them as a source for their hearing support. KPI 2: Demonstrate strong engagement on the campaign website (primary measures: time on site, unique visitors). THE CREATIVE IDEA 'The Hearing Test in Disguise' Based on the 'denial' insight, we developed a way to test people's hearing, without them knowing. Does Love Last Forever?' is a short film with two different endings, depending on the viewer's hearing ability. The film follows a couple's relationship over decades, and poses the question "Did love last?". The film is produced in a way that people with a hearing problem perceive the relationship to deteriorate. THE RESULTS Objective 1: Increase YOY leads Leads are critical to Cochlear. The more people who want to have a conversation about their hearing, the more people undertake the in-depth assessment process and hopefully become eligible for surgery. Our attribution model confirmed the impact on the first objective - to boost qualified leads into the Cochlear sales funnel by 20%: Contributed to an 87.4% YOY increase in Cochlear's leads. The YOY uplift was achieved on an annual marketing budget that was increased by only 11.5%. These leads came from the campaign website directly (13.4%), and by retargeting people who had visited the site (86.6%). Cochlear leads take a long time to mature (on average 6 years) however, in the 12 months since campaign launched we have seen some very promising results: 13 people have already had this life changing surgery. Over 2,000 are in the initial stages of candidacy, meaning they are consulting with Cochlear to get the relevant treatment for their hearing loss. Whilst there are many more in the pipeline, we have used these people to calculate our ROMI: The campaign generated Cochlear $2.08 for every $1 spent. Objective 2: Engagement The second objective was to get people to engage with the Cochlear brand and consider them as a source for hearing support. This was measured by evidence of strong engagement on the campaign website, and our ability to obtain national earned media coverage: 128,883 unique visitors. Average time on site = 14 minutes (compared to Cochlear's website average of 2 minutes 36", a 493% increase in engagement). The campaign secured unprecedented PR coverage earning media reach in the hundreds of millions across TV, major news outlets, radio and press.