Chronic Rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is a chronic inflammatory condition of the nose. It affects millions of people but is hardly known.

CRSwNP sufferers may experience a wide variety of disease symptoms that negatively impact their daily lives, including reduced sleep, constant headaches, mental dysfunction and most distressingly, a loss of smell.

Since many CRSwNP symptoms are similar to sinusitis or a common headache, the disease can be easily missed. People silently suffer for months or years without a diagnosis or the correct treatment.

With over 3 Million people suffering in Germany alone, Sanofi was looking to raise awareness of the condition and encourage potential patients to speak to their doctors about diagnosis and treatment, rather than suffer in silence.

Objectives

- Raising awareness of the disease and its symptoms

- Drive education and empathy

- Create an online social community for sufferers

- Encourage people to seek diagnosis

IDEA

To help healthcare professionals and the public emotionally connect to the importance of smell, we need them to feel it.

We created The Scent of Life: the world’s first patient stories in scent.

This unusual perfume range captured the beauty and uniqueness of personal memories in smell, and shared those memories with the world in a vivd, first-hand way and would earn attention and generate coverage.

Scent 'memories' were experienced at an in-person event with health care professionals and sent to influencers and the media, so they could experience them too.

Insight

Smell is the most direct, emotional sense we have. But most people don’t connect to the importance of smell. In fact, they would rather lose their sense of smell than their mobile phone!

Target Audience

Healthcare professionals and the general public. To reach these, we also targeted media, the press and social media.

Key Message

We needed to reach people who wouldn’t know they had a problem and to start a conversation about a disease nobody had heard of. To do that, we needed to get everyone thinking about their sense of smell, and how devastating it would be to lose it. To do that in the most vivid way, we created 'patient stories in scent'.

Creation & Distribution of Assets

-Interviews were conducted around the patient stories

-Memories were turned into fragrances

-Fragrances sent to HCPs media, influencers & the press

-A live event engaged them further

On World Fragrance Day, we released the first ever ‘patient stories in scent’ to members of the press and the medical community in a live experience event.

A campaign film was created and shared during the experiment as well as by influencers.

Influencers suffering from CRSwNP shared the campaign along with their own ‘scent stories’ and experiences.

An Instagram channel was created which was dedicated to educating patients about CRSwNP. This created and empowered the first CRSwNP community online.

Online Hub created for CRSwNP, including information and tools, self assessment and testing criteria and ‘find a doctor’ function for people who might be suffering to locate their nearest Ear, Nose & Throat specialist.

13,600+ people have taken self-tests so far

195+M Reach in digital and print press

175 Pieces of coverage across lifestyle & medical publications

10.3 Million Paid Media Impressions

Website Visits

CTR 96,236

109,031 Website clicks

29,151 Unique Users

48.000 Sessions

2,487% increase in sessions and 3,515% increase in users during campaign compared to prior month

Self Assessment Tests

1,550 Users

1,658 Sessions

Film Views

5.8 Million Campaign Film Views

New Instagram Channel for CRSwNP

1.161 Followers

30 Feed posts

50 Story posts

1.4 Million Impressions