meet marlö
BRANDING | HEALTH MARKETING | DIRECT TO CONSUMER | SALES ENABLEMENT
THE CHALLENGE: As a leading B2B manufacturer of high quality eye care products, Alcon has been a trusted partner to medical professionals for over a century. The problem is, the world has changed a bit in the last 100 years...
With the rise of eCommerce brands like 1-800-Contacts and Hubble offering cheap, fast and—most importantly—convenient contact lens delivery, the traditional eye doctor practice was falling behind, leading to lost revenue and increased customer churn.
So Alcon set out to create a direct-to-consumer model and digital platform that would help patients get the seamless service they expected, while keeping the eye doctor at the center of everything. The key was authentically connecting to consumers without disrupting critical business relationships.
Meet Marlö.
THE SOLUTION: We began by creating a brand that would stand out among the consumer health leaders.
Alcon was an expert at working with healthcare professionals, but had no experience connecting with consumers directly—an audience we had to win over in order for Marlö to be successful.
So we started by delving deep into the key audiences—both from a B2B and a B2C lens—to understand their key motivators, pain points and how Alcon could serve as the most trusted and reliable solution. The result was a powerful brand playbook and persona insights that drove the rest of the campaign.
Next, we needed to stand out from the fresh, disruptive brands that were taking over the market.
A bold, fresh color palette helped clearly delineate the clinician and patient experience in all materials. Critically, we broke away from the stock photo no-man's-land by producing a unique and whimsical photo shoot that captured the doctor and patient experience, cleanly showed the process and tools and added an ownable look that competitors couldn't easily replicate.
From there, we used this bold brand to develop everything that would help doctors and patients get comfortable with their new ally—all with a welcoming handshake tagline "I'm Marlö and I care."Pun intended.
An engaging brand website, animated demo and explainer video content, social content, print ads and point-of-purchase ads all went a long way to breaking into the market in a big way.
Never has one little Umlaut created so much buzz.
But beyond catching consumers' eyes, we also needed to convince eye care professionals of the value of partnership with Marlö. The key was to prove that the tool wasn't a competitor, but instead a partner to help create new revenue streams—helping doctors boost retail revenue and meet patient expectations.
Sales reps were pivotal in telling this partnership story, so we invested in sales enablement materials, such as a highly visual and interactive sales playbook loaded onto iPads that helped reps guide their clients through simple, stunning and impactful content that helped seal the deal.
THE RESULTS: The push and pull campaign worked brilliantly, to the tune of 1 million new Marlö users in the first three years, an average 90% customer retention and 30% increase in contact sales for participating ECPs.
Through careful strategic planning, a bold brand and one little umlaut, Alcon was able to successfully boost both B2B and DTC sales while building stronger relationships with both eye care professionals and consumers.
