We targeted heart surgeons, a very specialized and hard-to-reach audience, known for their skeptical attitude towards advertising. Moreover, this audience belonged to a highly regulated category, adding complexity. This required breaking away from conventional approaches within the category, putting high demand on insights and solutions.

With our rather surprising and disarming solution – a special cookbook for heart surgeons that helped them exercise their dexterity (to improve their skills in the operating room) – we succeeded in creating an interest and engagement to connect with the brand, without having to go into specific therapies.

The idea behind the cookbook was to connect with our health care audience with an idea that was not about products and solutions, to be able to come across with one campaign including several markets, all with its strong regulations if about products and treatments.

The local markets all have a legal and compliance department, and they made sure the idea and the communication followed the local rules and regulations, as an example in the U.S. and the regulations by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA).

Target group cultural context: The main focus for this campaign was the US, but markets around the globe, such as UK, Japan and China, were also important. It’s a true challenge to be relevant in such different cultural contexts. However, by understanding our specific target group, the heart surgeons, we’ve managed to transcend these barriers by pinpointing their shared drivers, values, and interests. We learned that the specific mindsets of the target group were stronger than the general difference between the geographic cultures. We leveraged this learning mindset and shared interests to create a campaign that worked across diverse markets.

Getinge’s products apply to strict regulations for communication. Each market/region with its own regulations. Therefor we created our idea and campaign based on the target groups shared mindset. No products were mentioned in the campaign. Local legal department at Getinge made sure we followed all regulations, adapted to specific markets.

Our audience was heart surgeons. With this very specific audience in mind, we looked for insights they found truly relevant and engaging. We learned that they share specific mindsets and we leveraged these insights to create a campaign engaging their mindsets to their work.

Despite being a global med tech company with advanced products for heart surgery they are known by their product names, and not as Getinge products. This creates a business challenge since being seen as big is vital for being trusted and thereby being selected as a supplier of products that could mean the difference between life and death.

The brief: Make Getinge more known and strengthen the position as a trusted partner within cardiac surgery.

The target audience: Heart surgeons, and hospital staff within cardiac surgery.

Priority markets: US, and in addition UK, Japan and China. The budget for an international campaign was limited so we needed earned media.

Campaign goal: To generate international impact among our niche audience to make Getinge more known and associated to heart surgery. We wanted our audience to get curious and visit the site to learn more – about our idea, and about Getinge.

Through extensive desk-top research and in-depth interviews we realized surgeons have a very special relationship with their hands. Dexterity is key to successful surgery and the heart surgeon really feels that. They find all sorts of ways to exercise their ability to work with their hands with high precision. Our idea was to get their attention by finding a new, funnier, and more rewarding way of dexterity training, while connecting to this special behavior. After discovering that surgeons over-index in terms of interest in cooking, we found a surprising clash with the ability to create immediate interest and engagement: cooking + surgery. The Heart Surgeon’s Cookbook was born. A cookbook demanding such a high level of dexterity it could provide heart surgeons with a ground-breaking and interesting way of dexterity training. This ties perfectly with Getinge as their products are only as good as the hands using them.

The idea was to offer surgeons a new way to practice dexterity by a clash of two worlds: surgery and cooking. That clash followed through the whole execution. The cookbook and the recipes were created in a collaboration between a reputable heart surgeon and a Guide Michelin chef. The design of the book captures that clash. From how it is opened (by gently cutting with a scalpel to access the content), to the two different fonts (one for the surgeon and one for the chef), the recipes, the images, and the layout.

The cookbook was produced as both a physical book and in digital format, so that as many surgeons as possible should be able to practice their dexterity with our high precision recipes.

The idea of a cookbook for heart surgeons worked!

The story generated 400+ pieces of earned media. It was picked up in broader health media outlets, where we knew we would reach our audience, including BBC Health Check, Times Radio and high-profile health news in Japan and China.

The earned stories generated 5,3M estimated views with a PR-value of almost 2M USD. The potential reach was 457M.

The campaign films about the initiative were viewed more than 14 M times. Proving the content was seen as engaging Click Through Rates 500% above goal.

Most importantly: The audience became so curious they wanted to know more about Getinge and the cookbook, generating 514,000 clicks to site, 1,400% above target. The cookbook is now used by surgeons in 23 market.

In all, we managed to reach our specific audience, driving engagement and building the brand in new ways.