Case Study: Ensure Healthy Moms


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Case Study: Ensure Healthy Moms

Issue: 2007may

Challenge: When Ross Laboratories, the makers of Ensure shakes, launched Ensure Healthy Mom, a nutritional drink for expectant mothers and new moms, it needed a way to let consumers taste-test the product. Recognizing the importance of the patient-doctor relationship, Ross Laboratories felt the best way to distribute Ensure Healthy Mom was through OB/GYN offices.

Michael Propst, sales manager for The Vernon Company (UPIC: VERNON), a Newton, Iowa-based distributor, worked with Ross Laboratories to develop a promotion that would allow the company to get the product to consumers. While it would have been simple enough to deliver cases of Ensure Healthy Mom to doctors’ offices, it was important for patients to try the product cold.

Solution: Ross Laboratories’ sales representatives delivered mini-refrigerators from supplier Stromberg Brand (UPIC: 1ASTRMBG) along with cases of Ensure Healthy Mom to 700 OB/GYN offices throughout the United States. Staff at the doctors’ offices stocked the mini-fridges with the drinks so patients could try a cold sample on the spot. The doctors’ offices also had Ensure Healthy Mom coupons so patients could purchase the product at a discount. Because the mini-fridges were branded with Ensure Healthy Mom logos and were identified as property of Ross Laboratories, the promotion adhered to the PhRMA ethics code.

Results: Although Ross Laboratories recently decided to discontinue the Ensure Healthy Mom drink, this campaign was a hit for doctors and patients. “The OB/GYN’s loved this because they felt it was a great concept to create awareness [among expectant mothers and new moms] about getting the right nutrition,” Propst says. “The doctors looked like heroes to have this product available right in their offices. And the feedback they got from their patients was all positive.”
—Melanie Medina
FastFact: Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) broadcast ads were effectively legalized in August 1997 when the FDA eliminated the requirement that ads present a drug’s entire brief summary. Claritin’s “Blue Skies” campaigns were among the first DTC ads released.
Source: Medical Marketing & Media magazine, April 2007 issue

FastFact: Although government regulators are considering restrictions on DTC marketing of prescription drugs, a study by the National Medical Association (NMA) found that African-American physicians, many of whom serve communities where patients lack medical information, favor DTC efforts. The NMA represents 30,000 African-American physicians.
Source: National Medical Association March 2007 press release

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