When you feel fear, do not lose courage.

That was the attitude that Omron had amidst the turbulent Brazilian economic scenario: believed in making in a moment of crisis an opportunity to invest – attitude that goes the opposite way from what we are used to see in most part of the companies.

From then on, our challenge has started.

How to boost sales of a product from Active Health (focused on body weight and measurements control), considered in Brazil as a commodity, in a category with no branding investments, in which the purchasing decision is guided by the lowest price?

How to make people consider to buy a product of high value compared to the competition, in moment of economic crisis?

All of this with a US$3,000 investment.

To solve this challenge, we made a decision: we needed to dare to stand out from the category, until then, with no face, raising awareness to Omron through a communication that binds with people.

How?

Bringing to public the acknowledgment of one truth which is common to all, that represented a smoldering and real feeling. An insight which makes all of us equals in only one feeling: fear – more specifically, the fear of facing the scale.

The fear of the act of weighing brings to people the perception of wiping out the chances of a healthy life. “Feed the fear” is to go against our own capacity of overcoming, of reestablishment. Is to assume the condition of not being socially acceptable, of not seeing ourselves inside the aesthetic standards imposed as beautiful and healthy. It is to play against ourselves.

But how to turn that feeling tangible? How to work with fear in favor of the Omron Active Health line?

Through a spokesperson who employ credibility to the communication and created empathy with the public. For that, we re-signified two characters well known in popular culture, giving life to Fat Jason and Fat Krueger. And, revealing an unknown fact until then: the villains’ fragility before the powerful scale.

As media strategy, we decided to avoid online environment, where players with seductive prices stand out in e-commerce. Therefore, we decided to advertise during winter (period when people practice less exercises), the communication in Ana Maria magazine: one of the most popular female publishing in Brazil, focused on family, health and, most of all, cooking – flagship and favorite subject among “chubby” people. In other words, going in opposite way of most of the category efforts: vehicles focused on fitness themes.

Not by accident, results started to show up: in the first 30 days, there were increase of 9.4% in sales of Active Health, with constant growth during the strategic periods. The campaign also contributed significantly to raise awareness around the scale subject: in a category, until then, anonymous, Omron scale appeared as the only term related in searches. In the points of sales (online and offline), there were positive variation regarding sales from the same period of the previous year: 57%.