Article in today's Herald Sun,
Leading the field in delicate but smart advertising
- JOHN BEVERIDGE
- HERALD SUN
- JULY 29, 2015 9:00PM
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Analytica is a speculative buy based on its PeriCoach device. Picture: Thinkstock
WHEN you are selling a product to treat female urinary incontinence, it pays to have a wicked sense of humour.
Which is why Analytica flicked the switch to vaudeville by enrolling the creative team behind some memorable internet video campaigns including the Period Fairy and Camp Gyno.
These campaigns relied on a brutal honesty leavened with plenty of humour to get the message across to a US audience and as you might expect, they have gone in even harder to sell the PeriCoach device.
To use some fairly indelicate but necessary terms the PeriCoach is inserted where the sun doesn’t shine, linked by bluetooth to a smartphone application and then takes the patient through a pelvic floor exercise regime that involves periods of squeezing and release.
While it is getting very good reviews from Australian incontinence physiotherapists and specialists and their patients who were the first test market, the challenge of selling the concept to a potentially squeamish US market is a tough one.
A viral campaign based around a “leaker’s anonymous’’ meeting was the result with some of the downsides of dealing with the symptoms of incontinence rather than the most common underlying cause outlined in uncomfortable detail.
As you might expect the PeriCoach makes a heroic entrance with a former leaker who is now able to jump, run, sneeze and laugh in the face of incontinence.
In the immortal words of one of the leakers, the device is: “like a Fitbit for your vag’’.
The advertising seems to be hitting the mark with more than 11,000 hits in the first day.
While pelvic floor exercises are hardly new, the device is one of the first that enables a doctor to actually check online records to ensure they have been completed correctly and then look for other potentially more sinister causes if needed.
On the business side, PeriCoach is manufactured here in Australia and production can be scaled up very quickly and fairly cheaply should sales of the medical device take off as Analytica chief executive Geoff Day hopes. Despite the laughs, incontinence is a very serious issue which is a major cause of nursing home admission and is said to restrict the lifestyles of up to one in three women.
Analytica and Kneomedia.
It is also a massive market with US incontinence pad sales alone worth $5.3 billion a year so even a modest take up could be a company maker for Analytica.
While the internet might be riddled with funny videos that failed to sell products, at least Analytica is giving itself the best possible chance of carving out a meaningful future in a very large market.
While the share price graph is fairly discouraging, the s
peculative buy call remains.
KNEOMEDIA is a company that has been through the wringer as it painfully restructured itself.
Now after a successful $1.25 million capital raising, the “edutainment’’ company (education and entertainment) is beginning to gradually release some of its game- based learning products in the US and Chinese markets.
Initially New York and the Guangdong province are the targets but the idea is to move quite quickly using apps and micro-subscriptions as well as tapping the vast US PTA and private foundation market.
The idea is to use compelling games to improve numeracy, literacy, science and art knowledge. Trials in some New York schools for students with special educational needs have produced good results.
There is a long way to go but with big markets and scalable products it is another
speculative buy.
(20min delay)