United States law allows prescription and non-prescription drug advertising and marketing directly to consumers, patients and healthcare providers. There are no formal regulations that distinguish direct-to-consumer advertising from direct-to-physician advertising, rather, regulatory authorities recognize three distinct types of advertising based on the advertisement’s content. Any advertisement that contains a product claim must include mandatory information to ensure risk information is properly conveyed. While advertisements for prescription and non-prescription drugs are regulated by different U.S. government agencies, common standards of truthfulness, fair balance, and claims based on substantial evidence must be observed. Despite the regulatory authority, advertisements directed to consumers or healthcare providers cannot be false or misleading in any way, regardless of the medium in which they are presented.

The GetAroundKnee campaign was designed to get “fence sitters” to talk to their doctors about knee replacement surgery and the GetAroundKnee—the only system designed to replace naturally circular knee motion. Fence sitters are described as people aged 45 to 75 who are thinking about but afraid of surgery, and doing anything they can to avoid it, including living in pain or leading a sedentary existence. Typically, medical device advertising targets surgeons who are already quite familiar with human anatomy and medical terms. To reach patients, we needed to simplify a complicated message about our product and its “single-radius” design. We also needed to let prospective patients know that there are different kinds of knee replacement systems, and that the choice they make ultimately determines the kind of mobility they enjoy post-surgery.

Our goal was simply to intrigue knee replacement candidates enough to go to our online surgeon finder so we could be sure that when they talked to a surgeon, it would be a Stryker surgeon.

The “Get Around Knee” campaign was built to make the knee design seem intuitive. We wanted people to realize that they weren’t replacing their knee, but the way their knee moves. And we wanted them to believe that the best knee movement is the movement closest to their natural knee.

So we created a world in which there were no circles.

With a non-media production budget of approximately $1.5 million, we created a television and print campaign that communicated our point of difference in a very simple way. While most multi-radius knee systems create an oval motion, the GetAroundKnee replaces the knee’s naturally circular motion. We created a world where circles don’t exist to make the point that nothing moves as smoothly, naturally, or easily as a circle.

The results have been tremendous so far. Given the number of visitors to a companion website and surgeon finder, fence sitters were obviously able to imagine what the promise of restored circular knee motion could mean for them and how they “get around.” The campaign had an almost immediate effect on sales growth. As of July 2012, sales were up nearly 8%.

In developing our strategy, we acknowledged one simple but overwhelming human truth: people fear surgery. We had to convince them that there was a product so natural, so in keeping with the way their bodies worked, that enduring surgery and recovery would be worthwhile.

So our strategic briefing centered around the phrase, “After all this, make sure your new knee is worth it.” This summed up the fact that people will put off surgery as long as they can due to their fears, enduring increasing pain and sedentary living all the while. After all that suffering, wouldn’t you want a knee that feels and works like your natural knee?

Stryker first came to the agency in reaction to activity by one of their competitors. The competitor had recently run a campaign targeting knee replacement candidates and had moved the market considerably. They did this by touting their “30-year knee”?a knee replacement proven to last 30 years.

In their campaign, they directly addressed one of the most important questions that patients ask about knee replacement, “How long will the new knee last?” This question was largely driven by surgeons who were just a little behind the times regarding knee replacement technology. (Actually, most modern knee replacements last about 30 years.)

We quickly realized that in order to blunt this competition and educate patients, we needed to reframe the question from “How long will my new knee last?” to “What kind of 30 years do I want to live?”