Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, is a rare lung disease that kills more people in the USA every year than breast cancer. The problem is most people, including doctors, have never heard of IPF. The average doctor will only see one or two IPF patients in their career and they may not even realise these patients have it. One interesting aspect of the disease could change that. More than 80% of IPF patients have a crackling sound in their lungs which sounds like Velcro. And the good news? You can hear it with a stethoscope. You just have to know what you’re listening for. That’s where the Sounds of IPF comes in.

Our strategy was to heighten awareness of the ‘Velcro disease’ to ensure that every patient with suspicious sounding lungs will be referred to a specialist for a full diagnosis. The Sounds of IPF campaign message is simple: Suspect. Detect. Think IPF.

We built a web platform, blitzed social media, created a minimentary and took the Sounds of IPF on the road to international medical conventions across Europe. Our social media campaign created nearly 1 million impressions and our face-to-face interactions at these conventions reached hundreds of respiratory doctors.

The Sounds of IPF campaign was unveiled to the medical community at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress (ERS) in 2012. The success of the website continued to grow as we added exciting new features which were revealed at ERS 2013. The website continues to grow in popularity, and as such, we will be unveiling the next phase as ERS 2014!

We are the first IPF campaign to use the sound of Velcro to help people better understand the sound of IPF - to reinforce this, we created 'Velcro cards' which will be back by popular demand at ERS 2014! We also used a 'Sonic Chair' at our medical booth that played the sounds of IPF and featured our 'Test Your Ear' tool. Booth hosts wore specially created IPF t-shirts that illustrated a pair of lungs - one healthy, one with IPF - drawing more attention to our campaign.

Our assets and overall approach proved to be successful in raising awareness of IPF.

- The Sounds of IPF website: Over 10,000+ views and growing

- IPF YouTube Minimentary: Over 8,000+ views and increasing daily

- Social Media Impressions: Nearly 1,000,000 impressions as a result of our campaign utilising YouTube, Vine, Facebook and Instagram! Did you know that Marlon Brando and Evel Knievel died of IPF? Our social media posts highlighting this had more than 4,000 Likes. Furthermore, our specially created Rare Disease Day video received over 100 ReTweets!

- We distributed over 2,000 Velcro cards... and we'll be printing more for the medical conventions this year!