Genea, a world-leading fertility clinic, saw their Australian market share slipping. Once an industry leader, their competitors’ share of voice had increased and relegated Genea to the middle of the pack. To make matters worse, IVF advertising in Australia is a sea of sameness with brands following the same category conventions. With brands and their marketing interchangeable in the minds of patients, media budgets play a huge factor in market share. Unfortunately, Genea’s media budget meant we couldn’t outshout our competition, so the only option was to outthink them and find a way to make Genea a market leader once again.

Our brief and objectives covered four main points:

Drive an increase in Genea consultations & web traffic

Make Genea top of mind among the IVF audience

Broaden awareness of the brand outside those currently thinking about fertility treatments (especially among a younger demographic)

Reaffirm Genea as a market leader

When it comes to conception, society focuses on natural sex between a man and a woman. Yet 1 in 20 children are conceived via IVF. With a lack of public acknowledgment that this is a normal way to have a baby, people with fertility issues feel stigmatised and unable to talk about it.

To regain our leadership positioning and resonate among patients, we wanted to break this stigma. So we rewrote the story of ‘Where babies come from’ and made IVF as natural as sex.

It launched with a playful, yet provocative film to drive the conversation — showing the real story of fertility struggles, before revealing IVF as a natural way to conceive. A children’s book tackled the same subject.

We released them directly to IVF patients who shared our message. Many felt empowered to break their silence for the first time. The story continued across every media channel.

Our target audience is broad, anyone in the IVF funnel. Topline, it’s females 25-49, with a focus on the lower age range. But Genea is inclusive for everyone who needs fertility help — no matter age, gender, or sexual orientation.

Due to our limited media budget, we had to find a way to resonate with this audience. So, we took on the stigma around fertility issues and rewrote the story of where babies come from to make IVF as natural as sex.

Our story was based on real insights from patients. Our strategy wasn’t to sanitise it for TV broadcast standards, rather make it highly provocative and put our story in the hands of the IVF community. Patients past and present shared our message. Many broke their silence on the subject for the first time.

The story continued across multiple channels to maximise reach of our target.

We launched in September 2020 with the main activity continuing until January. Although our story is always there to be shared.

The social film and book kicked-off the campaign being directly shared with our IVF community, patients past and present, from there they themselves became the media channel.

The story was also told across multiple placements including high-impact video placements to generate reach & awareness, supported with highly targeting digital & social amplification to further build reach & frequency.

The campaign was structured in two ways, brand (prospecting) to increase overall brand & category awareness and performance layers (conversion) to ultimately influence & drive bookings.

We started in the IVF community, but soon the story of where babies come from was being talked about in the wider community and was covered by national TV news. This resulted in an earned media reach of 5.1 million. (In Australian terms, that’s ¼ of the population).

We reached 92% of our target audience on social media and increased patient engagement by +27% MoM leading to an increase in site traffic increased by 121%

Importantly the story of where babies come from was no longer just about natural conception. Genea managed to broaden the story to include IVF too.