When it comes to oncology, medicine has advanced in big ways. But the business side of running an oncology practice hasn’t kept up. In the age of automation, back-office operations are often tedious, siloed and completed manually. Factors that contribute to misused resources and the growing cost of cancer care. That’s where AC3 comes in.
AC3 is a practice intelligence platform that harnesses the power of data to improve the quality and speed of back-office work. Allowing doctors and staff to trade paperwork and process for a more meaningful purpose—caring for patients. With care being core to their business, the real obstacle was creating an identity that lived up to AC3’s cutting-edge capabilities as well as their impact on patient care.
Bringing Care Into Focus
Cancer is humbling and, most importantly, human. So the branding had to communicate the function of a tech-driven product in a very human way. In addition to a visual identity, AC3 needed a way to talk about themselves to a more public audience. We developed positioning that helped define who they are. And rooted it in the real-world, analog benefits doctors and patients experience. Productivity, revenue, quality of care, this platform gives doctors the ability to do more. A lot more.
For the mark, we took a nod from the company’s namesake—Advanced Cancer Care Centers—and aligned it with the platform’s ability to improve operations within a practice exponentially. We let positioning guide design and the result was meaningful.
With any tech-based product, there’s a concern around sharing proprietary imagery—a challenge we faced when representing the product in a tangible way. Rather than showing the software itself, we focused on the moments AC3 makes possible.
Schaefer is proud to have been recognized by Medical Marketing and Media as “Best Place to Work” in 2020. In a tumultuous year marked with uncertainty, we are truly humbled and energized by the recognition. It is the result of tireless work done by the entire agency, lead by the vision and guidance of our Healthcare team. We couldn’t be more grateful for the recognition.
In a year when the workplace has been upended, the prioritizing of company culture and staff matters to a greater extent than ever before. The results of our third annual review spotlight the best small, midsize and large agencies, along with life sciences support firms, as rated by those who know them best: the employees themselves.
Schaefer Advertising
Never before has Schaefer’s mission to “Make Life Better” been more important to its employees than right now. From vital healthcare assistance (the company waived testing and hospital fees related to COVID-19), to an emergency cash fund for bill pay in the case of a spouse or family member being laid off, staffers say they have felt “seen” and “supported” from the very start of the pandemic.
In an effort to increase communication and boost morale, the company instituted virtual work anniversary celebrations on Zoom with heartfelt tributes from colleagues, and a daily “silver lining” email thread where one team member shares a positive experience from their quarantine and then chooses which colleague goes next.
While almost all Schaefer staffers shared their immense appreciation for how “fully transparent” their company president has been, through his efforts to send daily update emails and to reassure the team no furloughs or layoffs would take place, it was his turn as ice cream man that really garnered accolades.
Despite the fact that many employees live between 40 and 150 miles from Schaefer’s offices in Fort Worth, Texas, the company’s owner personally delivered pints of ice cream from a local artisanal creamery to every employee to thank them for their hard work during these difficult times. A gesture welcomed by all as “an incredibly unexpected and much-appreciated surprise.”
Survey Stat
Schaefer Advertising had 31 responses — the most in its category — and was one of the highest-scoring agencies for the answer to “Responded quickly and decisively to ensure employee productivity was unaffected as much as possible.”
Surgeons have many procedural options when caring for patients, and treating glaucoma is no different. Despite the numerous procedures and tools available for ophthalmologists, they each have the same goal: to treat their patients most effectively.
So, when OMNI® launched their new 2.0 device, which has functional advantages over other similar products on the market, we had to communicate the benefits this new device had over its competition.
An Evolved Device Needs an Evolved Campaign
Efficacy is what uniquely sets OMNI apart from other glaucoma treatment options available to surgeons. Beyond efficacy, the new OMNI device provides patients with a more acceptable risk level, addressing all three points of the conventional outflow pathway. While other procedures and devices focus treatment on a single point of resistance. The OMNI Surgical System allows surgeons to treat all severities of open-angle glaucoma, empowers them to intervene in combination and standalone procedures, and provides surgeons with the ability to treat glaucoma with versatility. All of these product advancements ultimately empower surgeons to treat their patients with a more efficacious approach with confidence and provide patients with a higher level of ocular treatment.
It’s All About Efficacy
OMNI’s brand awareness is strong and based on a functional message that resonates with ophthalmologists, cataract surgeons and glaucoma specialists. But we needed to evolve their position from function, that was established during the first generation of the device, and move into a more benefit-driven message that emotionally connects surgeons to their patients. To achieve that, efficacy had to be brought to the front and center of the campaign messaging. Additionally, we had to communicate that no other device addresses all three points of resistance in the conventional outflow pathway.
The concept, “Go for Three,” alludes to taking a three-point shot in basketball. It puts the ball in the hand of the surgeon and empowers them to make the choice. This tagline nods to the new OMNI device being the highest-scoring option available on the market, and encourages surgeons to choose the option that is better than the rest. Why settle for a 2-point layup when you have a wide-open shot at a 3-pointer? This active metaphor was a way to invigorate and engage the target audience with something unique in a crowded device market and simply position OMNI as a shot worth taking.
Results
Reached an all-time high in sales
Accelerated the brand in a very successful direction
Made a huge splash in the industry, even amid the Covid-19 pandemic
Evolved campaign expanded into a sales aid, educational materials, website, and into more multi-media placements
When the pandemic began, the UNT Health Science Center embraced its position as a leader in our community by providing a singular source of uplifting and empowering content. This culminated in coviddayxday.com serving as the center of the UNT Health Science Center’s covid-19 campaign. We knew that we had to engage a wide audience and convince them to adopt new, healthy behavior practices to meet the campaign’s goals and keep our community safe. Sounds hard, right? It is – but reaching the right audience with the right message can be done through thoughtful strategy and nimble responsiveness.
Goals
Generate community awareness of the coviddayxday.com website in Fort Worth, North Texas and beyond
Drive meaningful traffic to the new coviddayxday.com website
Encourage optimism and empowerment through reliable information
Meeting Audiences During the New Normal
Reaching audiences during a pandemic is tricky for numerous reasons, the largest of which is that people’s normal day-to-day routines have been overhauled, which makes reaching them difficult with traditional targeting strategies. So, when we began laying out a paid media campaign for DAYxDAY, we had to be creative and think about how to capture the attention of our audience in their new normal. Furthermore, we needed to communicate our message to English – and Spanish – speaking audiences that make up the bulk of North Texas’ demographic composition.
For general targeting, our strategy was adjusted for the lack of commute time where we would normally distribute content and re-tooled to focus on reaching audiences in-home. That meant leveraging Pandora and smart speakers to get media in front of people working from home. We also partnered with reputable news sources in North Texas for paid media, which elevates the trustworthiness of our content. To reach Spanish-speaking audiences, we used the same tactics and leaned into Spanish-speaking news partners as platforms to run paid media.
Reliable Information
When we began the DAYxDAY campaign, one of the primary goals was to cut through the noise and provide consistent, reliable information that was rooted in science and verified to be a best practice for community health. While framing the content pillars, we asked ourselves “what kind of information would be most helpful to our target audiences?” After ample deliberation, we chose five pillars under which we’d publish and contextualize our website content: News, Tips, Community, Well-Being, and Health Experts. Each of these pillars represented a different scope of information that could help inform and uplift our community in the face of disinformation and the harsh reality of life-altering quarantine protocols.
To fill up our content buckets, we reached out to community health and news partners to provide a steady stream of topical, up-to-date information. In addition to partner content, we created organic articles that were based on thoroughly researched subjects that were reinforced with trending search traffic.
Adjusting in Real-Time
Navigating the ever-changing world of covid-19 – from evolving health protocols, to shifting rules on social media and search engines, and understanding new clinical study updates – made this campaign particularly challenging. However, there was nothing more difficult than adjusting to the shifting regulations on social media to boost our campaign messaging. Shifting social regulations meant that we had to be nimble and responsive to the latest updates and incorporate the ambiguity of the restrictions into our paid and social media strategies. Throughout campaign implementation, we had to adjust our boosted messages so they adhered to the latest regulations on that specific platform, but still communicated the points we needed to convey.
Results
Over 12.4 million media impressions served
Over 1.4 million people reached through social channels
Over 166,800 pageviews registered
Over 118,400 unique website visitors
Email, display advertising and paid social media performance each greatly exceeded industry benchmarks
Audience Engagement isn’t Rocket Science
Providing useful content to a receptive audience will almost always return quantifiable gains. Through careful market research and detailed audience targeting, we were able to exceed the healthcare industry benchmarks for each of our analytical KPIs. Through it all, we not only exceeded expectations, but we also held true to the goal of empowering an informed, optimistic response among the North Texas region. When your mission is to Make Life Better, these results make us all humbled to play a role in changing minds.
Building a brand from the ground up is an exciting opportunity and challenge for our team. In this case, the branding needed to reflect the ground, the air, and the ether. The Medical Innovation District (MID) in Fort Worth started out as a disconnected/amorphous physical footprint, an energetic entrepreneurial community, a rich density of medical professionals and patients, and a vision for the future. Altogether, Medical Innovation District was a vision of possibility, so, when they called Schaefer to help name and brand the organization, we entered into an intense discovery process to help clearly communicate the purpose of this local innovation hub. But, can you build a brand from a vision and a mindset?
Goals
Generate awareness for Fort Worth’s Medical Innovation District by highlighting differentiation and a cohesive identity and opportunity in Fort Worth
Name, brand and launch district to cultivate direct conversations with key targets and attract them to Fort Worth
Strategy
From the outset, we wanted to find a path that spoke to entrepreneurs and innovative brands, striking the right balance to attract established healthcare companies and industry disruptors alike. We began strategizing the branding and positioning for MID by holding in-depth interviews with the internal stakeholders of the organization and community. We also wanted to incorporate the proximity to a dense healthcare employment cluster as a benefit of the location, which helps nurture local collaboration. Establishing the MID as a place where people collaborate and innovate solutions was critical to the final branding and positioning.
Refining the Brand Name to Reflect Purpose
When approaching any brand identity, it’s important to carefully listen to the client so that their industry-specific knowledge is pulled through to the final product. For the Medical Innovation District, that meant refining their purpose and clearly communicating it with a unique name. Specifically, the client wanted to get away from the term “Innovation,” which is oversaturated in the marketplace and does not illustrate the process behind innovation, which is the result of constant iteration. So, we looked at the core of innovation and saw a path to an answer: iteration, which is the process of constant improvement and at the heart of innovation.
We chose iter8 as the new brand name for MID. iter8 directly reflects the process by which ground-breaking ideas are created: through constant testing, fine-tuning and evolution. Furthermore, the name more accurately communicates the purpose of iter8’s position in the market and community.
Marrying Entrepreneurship and Healthcare
When we beganbranding the MID, we wanted to focus on bringing to the foreground the opportunity for entrepreneurial development to attract healthcare anchors, which are at the center of medical innovation. Positioning iter8 in Fort Worth as a place to pioneer new ideas in healthcare is a natural fit because Fort Worth is a place that pushes the boundaries of what is possible and creates new doors to open. At the heart of Fort Worth and iter8 is a maverick’s spirit, so we positioned iter8 as a brand that creates new frontiers in the healthcare landscape by fostering innovative ideas powered by community and collaboration.
Results
Unique and ownable name and identity
New launch advertising materials and website to centralize contact with key targets
Make Life Better
You can build a brand from a clear vision of the future and an innovative mindset. For iter8, that mindset will enrich the community of Fort Worth for generations to come. Fort Worth is our home, and it is rewarding to work for a client that helps position the city as a leader in local innovation and drive creative and scientific thought leaders to our great city.
Cancer. The word is enough to halt most in their tracks.
It is a disease that affects us all and we will each witness someone live with during our lifetime. This biological villain seems to be impossible to vanquish completely. But sometimes our heroes need us to help support their mission, to rise up as a community and prove that our collective efforts can result in a greater impact than any individual endeavor. This is exactly the purpose of the Moncrief Cancer Institute Report to the Community: to connect individuals with the community they help and empower more people to join the fight against cancer.
Every four years, the Moncrief Cancer Institute produces a Report to the Community that educates the public about their latest advancements in cancer treatment. The goal of the report is twofold: to generate awareness about preventive care and access to cancer treatment, and encourage donations, so that they can better serve their patients and community – because when we all fight, we fight for all.
People are at the heart of the Moncrief Cancer Institute and it was important for us to highlight the real people that are at the forefront of our society’s battle against cancer. Each person in the report features a community partner, volunteer, UT Southwestern / Moncrief physician, caregiver, and past or current patients. The report brings to light the personal stories of cancer patients and survivors and illustrates how Moncrief has helped individuals living with cancer and established itself as a premier resource in the global fight against cancer.
The Moncrief Cancer Institute Report to the Community is a vitally important article that inspires hope in the face of a constant uphill battle. It encourages communal support and raises money for survivor services and early screening for those that would not otherwise have access to care. In short, it inspires everyone in the community to take a stand against cancer. Because if we face it together, we can end it together.
Acne is the most prevalent skin disease in the United States, yet most of us don’t see the struggle that happens beneath the surface. For Acne Awareness month, our client – a major global pharmaceutical manufacturer – wanted to educate the public and healthcare providers about the unseen emotional realities of acne.
We created an unbranded educational campaign with the goal of combining the data and the human element to show people with acne that they are not alone and empower them through a sense of community. Beyond educating the general public, it was important to connect healthcare providers to the patient experience. By showing them the daily struggles of people with acne, healthcare providers can begin treating acne beyond the surface and focus on healing the individual in full.
The result is a powerful campaign that brings a silent battle to the surface and shows people struggling with acne that they are not isolated with their feelings.
When COVID-19 first struck the United States, people weren’t sure what to think or how to appropriately respond. This left a void of reliable information, and The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth – a medical research center and university – saw an opportunity to step forward as a reliable source of scientific information that people could trust. Since the Health Science Center had recently unveiled its rebranding efforts, the timing was perfect to build awareness and positively impact the community.
Avoiding Fear and Promoting Optimism
The public is saturated with dire warnings and doomsday scenarios about COVID-19. While the health and safety intent is noble, many of the messages cause stress, anxiety, and fear, and the emotional effects of these campaigns can muddy the facts and leave the community confused about the realities of COVID-19. The situation required someone to step up, take the lead and empower the people of North Texas with reliable messages and accurate information about COVID-19. Instead of creating something that leads to confusion and fear, why not urge optimism through clear information and encourage preparation?
Producing Against a Deadline and Beneath Quarantine
The seriousness of the coronavirus required truly timely messaging. With that urgency in place, our team had to be nimble and responsive and put together a comprehensive campaign that would inspire community-wide participation in safer lifestyle changes. To complicate matters further, we earned this new business opportunity while our entire team was in the first stages of working remotely and adjusting to the new normal of professional life under quarantine. These circumstances challenged us to strategize quickly, and the nature of creating accurate messages about COVID-19 implored us to execute with extreme accuracy.
Goals:
Change attitudes about living during a pandemic from fear to resilience.
Educate and empower cautious optimism and offer practical and informative guidance and resources.
Leverage the credibility of HSC as the messenger and aggregator of content.
Expand HSC’s influence on North Texas by positioning them as dependable sources of reliable information about COVID, and healthcare at large.
Improve HSC’s brand awareness and impact in North Texas.
The Solution
COVID-19 is a serious disease that requires people’s earnest respect. Unfortunately, that has created an atmosphere of negativity, and disempowerment that makes people feel like they’re being told what they can and cannot do every single day. People are worried about their jobs, concerned for their family and friends, and lack a clear direction and information about where the situation is heading.
The pervasiveness of negativity and the ultimate feeling of powerlessness led to the creation of the COVID DAYxDAY campaign, which empowers people to be optimistic and pragmatic during these uncertain times. When we created this campaign, we wanted to change the public’s general attitude from fear to resilience. We understand that people feel down, powerless, and pessimistic about the future, so our challenge is to help our community get through this one day at a time – and that’s where DAYxDAY was born. Our ultimate goal is to meet our audience where they are emotionally, and encourage a positive attitude shift with hope, optimism, and science-based guidance that can protect the individual – and our community – from the coronavirus. We needed to do all of this while under a brief, three-month campaign period.
A Comprehensive Educational Campaign Tailored for North Texas
We built the DAYxDAY campaign with the guidance and partnership of the Health Science Center team. DAYxDAY provides north Texans with reliable information about how to safely navigate the world during the pandemic and offers important community updates to the people of North Texas. In fact, education is at the heart of the DAYxDAY campaign, and one of the core objectives is to encourage healthy lifestyle changes to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. To centralize this information, we created coviddayxday.com – a microsite under the Health Science Center umbrella purely focused on sharing COVID-19 content.
Our campaign content matrix uses a blend of organic content, partnership content, paid and organic social media, and earned media to make certain that our message reached the widest local audience possible. Furthermore, the microsite exists in English and Spanish to better communicate with a third of North Texas, which is Spanish speaking.
Tactical Activation:
Developed a fully integrated digital campaign to build awareness and drive traffic to the Health Science Center’s COVID-19 resource page.
Built a new microsite to consolidate and share relevant COVID-19 content.
Encouraged opt-ins and built an integrated CRM and text audience.
Developed new content and repurposed existing content through the new microsite.
Continued awareness-building and built opt-ins through multiple digital platforms.
Expanded geographic targeting to cultivate a larger audience for UNTHSC and make a larger impact on the community.
Results: In just 3 months, the DAYxDAY campaign generated:
Nearly 10 million media impressions served
Over 1 million people reached through social channels
Over 100,000 pageviews on the COVID DAYxDAY website
Over 70,000 unique website visitors
Email, display advertising and paid social media performance each greatly exceeded industry benchmarks
An Ongoing Battle
The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, and we’re still working to encourage people to take the necessary preventative measures to protect themselves and our community. It’s an honor to be part of a creative campaign that educates and empowers our North Texas home, and we feel fortunate to play a role in helping to keep our community safe and healthy. As a result of our shared success, we’ve expanded the initial campaign agreement into a broader, long-term initiative for the UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth.
One of the most thrilling challenges is helping a client launch a new product, which is exactly what we did for the TearCare® system by Sight Sciences.
Goals
To introduce a new brand to a growing market
Capitalize on a market opportunity with disruptive technology
Improve the lives of patients by getting a new product that targets the underlying cause of dry eye into the hands of eye care professionals
Analyzing a New Market
Before launching any new product, it’s critical to have a deep understanding of the landscape and the potential competitors or challenges within the market. For TearCare®, we performed a thorough analysis, through both primary and secondary research, of the overall healthcare environment, the eye care submarket, the competitive set and TearCare® ’s differentiating attributes. We came away with some incredibly useful data.
There are 40 million dry-eye sufferers in the United States, and of those, 86% have some component of Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD). We discovered that most of the existing dry-eye devices are cumbersome to administer to patients, take the precise control out of the doctors’ hands and are expensive for a practice to adopt.
Because of the way TearCare® was designed, and its philosophy to address the root cause of dry eye with a combination of leading-edge technology and doctor skill, we saw this is a huge position of value for TearCare® – and that’s where we began crafting our strategy.
A Different Kind of Healthcare Product
Traditionally, the treatment of dry eye disease has been done with large pieces of stationary equipment that requires the patient to keep their eyes closed and doesn’t fully allow the eye care provider (ECP) to fine-tune the procedure to their specific needs.
Even newer entrants into the market addressed the condition in impersonal or intimidating ways, potentially leaving the patient and the ECP with a sub-optimal approach. In addition, the market leader is incredibly capital intensive and presents a challenge to eye care practices to meet their business goals. These conditions created a perfect combination for a company and a new device to address dry eye differently.
Enter TearCare® – the most unconstrained way to target the underlying cause of dry eye – and make real headway – in evaporative dry eye disease.
TearCare® is the world’s first blink-assisted device that applies heat to the eyelids to remove blockage associated with Meibomian Gland Dysfunction. It’s a wearable, blink-assisted design that offers a universal fit across various patient lid anatomies and delivers consistent thermal energy to prepare meibum for clearance by an ECP. It does so in a system that doesn’t require a steep financial investment in a large piece of equipment. All of this informed the final positioning of giving healthcare providers and patients freedom.
Launching a Product to Disrupt the Market
Launching a brand-new product is incredibly exciting but introducing one that will make the entire market take notice can be exhilarating.
We helped take TearCare® to market with a fully integrated marketing and advertising strategy that focused on the freedom TearCare® gives patients and ECPs, differentiating the device from others in the space.
We utilized a blend of paid, owned and earned media channels to deliver the primary campaign messaging. We designed a new website to act as the central hub of information about TearCare® and helped educate healthcare professionals about the new device with trade show activation, sales support materials, and practice-building resources.
This entire campaign was aimed at educating ECPs, introducing them to a new way to treat MGD, and helping them get the device and training needed to begin helping patients. As the campaign began to rollout, the results were astounding.
Results
Brought brand new, disruptive product to market
The number of new accounts opened in year 1 was 3 times that of the nearest competitor
Make Life Better
Healthcare work is always incredibly rewarding because it allows our team to help connect healthcare professionals to patients in need. For Sight Sciences’ TearCare® device, we were able to help connect healthcare professionals to a new device that targets the underlying cause of dry eye and make life better for those suffering from a chronic degenerative disease.
Most prescription savings cards cover a narrow scope of treatments, which overcomplicates the savings process. As a result, patients are often left confused about how to redeem savings and may end up actually paying more for their prescriptions. Discounts change frequently and branded products are not always covered, leading to patients and providers losing confidence in the cards and programs themselves.
Galderma CareConnect is a patient savings program that consolidates Galderma’s prescriptions into one savings portal that’s accessible for patients and “Remarkably Simple” to use.
Goals:
Build awareness of the savings program among qualified patients.
Make the program easier to access for patients.
Inform more potential patients about their eligibility for the program.
Strategy & Execution
Schaefer led the Galderma CareConnect launch with a few key strategic imperatives: communicate the scope of Galderma prescriptions covered under the program and quickly build awareness of the program among patients, healthcare providers, and pharmacists. We developed a comprehensive, multi-channel campaign around the tagline “Remarkably Simple.” This included traditional advertising, digital ads, video, paid digital media, display targeting, customized email marketing as well as personal and non-personal sales support.
Connecting Patients with Care
At the core of this comprehensive campaign was GaldermaCC.com, a centralized location for information about the savings program. The site was strategically developed to communicate key information to each of our core audiences:
Patients – Information about savings, ease of use and a great opportunity to quickly download a GCC card.
Healthcare Professionals – Key points to share with their patients when prescribing Galderma products, information about pharmacy access and a portfolio of products on the card.
Pharmacists – Information about patient eligibility.
The website follows a clean design and user-friendly navigation to make the user experience just as “Remarkably Simple” as the Galderma CareConnect program itself. In addition, the website utilizes a seamless API to connect directly with the card provider, so that a unique card can be generated in just seconds when the user chooses to download.
By making this direct connection, we are able to utilize technology and data to measure card redemption rates at pharmacies across the country and measure the success of marketing campaigns in market.
Results
In less than two years, Galderma Care Connect site metrics have steadily climbed month after month.
To date, Galderma Care Connect has reached more than one million unique patients.
As of June 2019, more than 3 million prescriptions have been processed through the Galderma Care Connect portal, saving patients, healthcare providers, and pharmacists valuable time and money.
MM&M Gold Award for Best Payer Marketing.
Make Life Better
Navigating healthcare can be a confusing process for patients and even some healthcare providers. By creating the Galderma CareConnect website, we were able to help more people download a patients’ savings card and connect them with more affordable care.
