In a difficult contraceptive market - lack of education, rejection of contraceptives, as well as legal restrictions - our challenge was to successfully promote the already launched Nuvaring - an innovative, once-a-month, intravaginal contraceptive ring - without mentioning the brand name.

The objective: grow the market share from 2.7% to 6% over two years.

Strategy: build an educational campaign on contraception, to dismantle myths and encourage dialogue in a relaxed context.

Our creative idea: we used an apparently contradictory statement (Smart girls do it once a month) that pinpointed the differentiating benefit of the vaginal contraceptive ring – once a month administration - while left plenty of room for debates and interpretations.

We created a highly engaged and vocal community, called “Smart Girls Circle”, “housed” online, with 3 pillars: an educational website, a fun-centered Facebook page and a mobile extension. Our girls received information on all types of contraceptives, but also found a cozy environment to discuss contraception, sex, relationships, play educational games, plan their sex life or just have fun. In 2013, we expanded the community offline by taking the Smart Girls to the theater.

Results: in December 2013, our community numbered 190k members, and Nuvaring market share reached 8,6%.

The community has launched in a press event, where a famous soap star and a fashion designer gave the press shocking confessions - "I do it once a month" – revealing that they actually referred to their favorite contraceptive. Later on, we used them in interviews about their intimate life and supported the community.

On Facebook, the girls played "Kill the Sperm" game, planned sex lives with the Sex Predictor app (on FB and mobile), shared comments and stories. The humorous tone successfully disguised education as fun.

Next, we conquered the theater. A famous Romanian author wrote and directed for us the comedy “Two Lines” - a story of love, sex and responsibility, with a clever way to place the product at the peak of the play. After its launch in November 2013, Two Lines became the talk of town and leading performance of the theatrical season.

The overall results, after a 2-year campaign, meant:

- increased attention for the educational pillar: 50,000 website visitors, spending on average 4.5 minutes on the site while visiting an average of 5 pages.

- lots of participation: 190,000 Facebook fans and an engagement rate of 6.87%, more than double that of the category.

- 2 x full house theatre shows / month (ongoing), without any intervention or promotion on our part, beyond the launch.

- free exposure: a total of 2.5 millions Romanians reached through unpaid articles and blog posts.

- and ultimately the sales: 2,7% to 8,6% market share in 2 years, surpassing by far the initial estimation