Oticon – TEGO and the Hearwell family

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Challenge
Oticon produces hearing instruments for a worldwide market. The products are sold via dealers of independent hearing clinics. Customers come either on their own initiative or are referred by the health system. These customers rarely have any brand preferences, but audiologists - those employees who assess customers' degree of hearing loss and select the appropriate hearing instrument - can have preferences based on product functionality. The store owner focuses most on having a wide range of products to choose from and on profit. In this way, price plays just as important a role as product features in driving customer loyalty.

The market for hearing instruments is extremely innovation-driven, and product launches get all the attention among dealers. Consequently, Oticon has products in stock that do not reach their earning potential because they have to give way to new products launches.

One of these products is TEGO, which is No. 1 in the medium-quality hearing instrument market. As a mature product, TEGO has peaked and is no longer in focus in the local markets. Our task was to support TEGO in the market and prolong its lifetime and value for Oticon – via a campaign.

The campaign's qualitative goals were to:

• Ensure motivation and focus in both store owners and employees (audiologists)
• Ensure a high level of knowledge about TEGO (product features and benefits)
• Create long-lasting involvement

The quantitative target was:
TEGO is a product in its twilight years. It was our task to defend TEGO's fading sales numbers on the German market and thereby further capitalize on the success of this product.

Solution
The target group was 2,111 hearing clinics in Germany. The campaign targets store owners and employees/audiologists. The store owner serves as "gatekeeper" for employees with regard to what they may spend their time doing. Oticon does not have direct access to these employees. In this way it is the store owners who determine the suppliers and products.

The strategy comprised 2 elements:

1. Tailor-made promotion offer to the dealer
2. Strengthening of sales numbers via increased focus on and understanding of TEGO's features and benefits

Based on each dealer’s sales statistics, we tailor-made the TEGO offer so that it was both realistic and attractive for the dealer to keep focused on the product. The principle was: If the sales level of TEGO in the second half of the year stayed the same as it had been in the first half, the dealer would receive a rebate.

To ensure that the dealer would be motivated to involve his employees, we developed an online training promotion that would help the employees help their customers find the right solution, as well as generate high knowledge of TEGO features. The campaign motivated the employees to maintain a focus on TEGO so sales would remain consistent instead of falling in the event of a new product launch, for example from a competitor.

We motivated the audiologists with a campaign universe in which they could:

• Win using their knowledge of customer care and counseling
• Win using their knowledge of TEGO

Creative idea
Meet the Hearwell family, answer their questions and win

Audiologists naturally choose from the products that the dealers have on stock. They will often have individual preferences, but sales-promoting activities do affect their choices. However, for the most part audiologists focus on customer counsel – not on optimizing the store's income by concerning themselves with the product mix. So the campaign needed to stir their professional and human interest in motivating and involving customers. We made this possible with a story that invited the audiologists to come out and play:

The Hearwell family is made up of 4 fictional characters who live in an online universe with 4 quiz rounds. These characters give the contestant different tasks related to his/her professional role as an audiologist. The tasks are presented as multiple choice questions that the participant must answer correctly in order to get access to each round's prize drawing.

The participants answered individually – but won collectively. This motivated each participant but also created an interest in sharing knowledge and helping each other.

Campaign elements

• A letter to the dealers with campaign information, plus a poster and folder as supporting material to sell the activity to the employees
• For each quiz round the participants received an email invitation
• An online quiz site. On the front page of the site one of the characters in the story introduces the first assignment. The contestants get an updated story by using the main menu

In each round the participants were encountered with a problematic situation and some questions they had to answer to qualify for the round's prize drawing. After each round, all data of each participant would be stored. Finally, participants who had answered all questions correctly would also be eligible for the final drawing.

After the final round, the contestants could give their opinion of the campaign by answering some evaluative questions.

Results

• Sales increase of 9.9% among participants, measured from the beginning of the campaign to the end of the year (6 months)
• More than 5 times as many employees participated compared with earlier dealer promotions
• More than every 10th dealer participated, each with an average of 4 employees throughout all 4 weeks of the summer holidays. 96% completed all of the rounds

In the final evaluation the employees said:

• 98% thought the questions were relevant
• 98% thought the story of the Hearwell family was relevant
• 55% learned something new
• 100% wanted to participate in similar activities for other Oticon products