Pandemic pivot shifts digital health offline to online

Brand problem

When Abbott, a multinational medical devices and healthcare company, brought the Continuous Glucose Monitoring system (CGM) to the Middle East, it transformed the everyday lives of diabetes patients. A true innovation in diabetes management, the product, marketed under the FreeStyle Libre brand, became an instant success. However, overall market awareness was exceedingly low.

As the pandemic spread across the world and lockdowns confined people to their homes, in a matter of weeks consumers migrated to the contactless and cashless digital space – but, Abbott did not have any online ordering or e-commerce solution in place.

Therefore, to facilitate market penetration, Abbott opened FreeStyle Libre Experience Centers in many hospitals across the MENA region where patients could try the new CGM system, get product information, consult with a medical practitioner, and buy the device. Making the purchase journey short and efficient, these on-ground centres became a critical marketing and sales channel for FreeStyle Libre products.

But Covid-19 changed everything. As the pandemic spread across the world and lockdowns confined people to their homes, in a matter of weeks consumers migrated to the contactless and cashless digital space. A wide variety of activities were affected such as working, learning, entertainment, fitness, communication, eating out, shopping, and even medical consultations. People were no longer visiting FreeStyle Libre Experience Centres or the store locator on the website. And Abbott did not have any online ordering or e-commerce solution in place. The company faced a serious challenge: how should it continue to grow market share without relying on the experience centres?

Lemon thinking

Our task was clear – maintain the demand generation and sales of the FreeStyle product line-up digitally in ten markets throughout the year, including the GCC and Levant, Egypt and Pakistan.

Solution

To enable conversion, we started from the end of the purchase journey: order and delivery.

Due to regulatory restrictions, the CGM medical devices cannot be sold directly on the Abbott website. Therefore, we designed a digital delivery request process whereby the customer submits an order request form and then receives a call from the call centre. The operator then takes the patient’s details, talks about the product, takes the order, and initiates delivery.

• Once the online order system was set up, we formulated the digital strategy and developed a complete always-on plan for the whole year across each of the ten individual markets.
• Due to different regulations and product specifications, we had to adapt the strategy to each market. Some countries allow digital delivery requests; others still permit only brick-and-mortar sales. The product line-up offers two ways of reading glucose levels – one through a reader, another through an app. In Pakistan and Egypt, only the reader option is available. Therefore, we pursued specific goals for every market – either to maximise the number of delivery requests, or promote app downloads, or drive traffic to the stores in markets with fewer restrictions.
• We identified relevant target audiences in the digital and social spectrum, their interests and corresponding groups on Facebook, as well as key words for searches.
• We collaborated with our client’s creative agency to adapt the messaging for our digital media strategy and the new market context: “Shop safely from your home and get the product delivered to your doorstep.”

Results

While this challenge really put our skills to the test, we designed a successful campaign strategy and proved more than capable of delivering full campaign management services. Most importantly, we helped Abbott to embrace change – to accept the consumer behaviour shift that threatened their growth, turn it to their advantage, and enhance it with a seamless shopping journey. As a result, in 2021 we were able to increase conversion by 153%.