The Illustrated Guide to Living with Diabetes in India (LWDI), India's #1 book on self-managing diabetes was sold through bookstores. They wanted to increase sales and reach the masses. We recommended reaching diabetics through their primary point of contact: The doctor. Diabetic patients have several queries and doctors have no time to answer them. So, doctors should love this book. But doctors had no time to meet us either. Because, in India, there is only one doctor per 1,700

people. So we set up fake patients over a 3-day SMS activity that showed doctors how they could save time–by simply wasting their time!

The campaign resulted in a 30% response rate from doctors, with response = suitable time for an

appointment! And 50% of doctors agreed to recommend, display and sell the book, resulting in a new sales channel and a 63% revenue increase, in just two months.

We showed doctors how they could save time–by simply wasting their time, with 'THE FAKE PATIENT PROJECT'–a 3 day SMS (text message) activity with doctors, targeting weekends when they are less accessible.

After getting phone numbers of doctors from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) database, we found the most common names in the localities they practiced, e.g., Akash in Colaba, Mumbai; Sneha in Juhu, Mumbai. These became our fake patients for the respective doctors. For 2 days, we kept SMSing diabetes queries to these doctors. If we received a reply, we thanked them with yet another query after 30 mins. If ignored, we simply sent more queries.

Over 4 weekends, 2,000 doctors across 3 Indian cities–Mumbai, Pune and Chennai–received over 5000 SMSes. After 3 fake messages, we sent them an SMS revealing our true identity along with the promise of a free copy and a request for an appointment. When we received an appointment from doctors, we used the opportunity to promote our book and

create a new sales channel via doctors.

30% of doctors replied to our final text message with an appointment. When our representatives met them, 50% of doctors agreed to recommend, display and sell the book. While we were expecting recommendations, we did not even dare to hope that doctors would be willing to sell the book at their clinics. This resulted in a new sales channel and a whopping 63% increase in revenues, in just two months.

Eventually, this became the only mechanism required for communication to doctors, and doctors became the central channel for sales of this guide surpassing sales in bookstores across the country. Thus, this activity created a mass category of the diabetes self-management guide where none existed in the country even a year back. Or as we like to put it, our fake patients were able to make some real sales.