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FLEXIBLE THINKINGTaking an old, established and well-known brand and bringing it rapidly up-to-date can be a daunting and perhaps risky experience. For Seven Seas it was essential and transformational.

Some brands are so ingrained in the national psyche that they are not only immediately recognisable, but the branding is so strong you can see the product in your mind’s eye if you say the brand name.

Seven Seas is one such brand. For many consumers of a certain age in the UK it says cod liver oil, vitamins and bright orange and red bottles. Founded in Hull in 1935, the brand pioneered the manufacture and marketing of cod liver oil as a dietary supplement before branching more widely into other types of dietary supplements.

Today the brand is part of the German pharma giant Merck but continues to have its headquarters in Hull. Seven Seas main sales channels remain through retail and pharmacy. But as the dynamics of these channels change along with the habits of their customers, Seven Seas realised they had a gap to address. The gap was in the brand’s digital presence.

According to Paul Ferron, Digital Marketing Manager for Seven Seas, “Until recently digital was not a channel we used to reach our audience, and we wanted to change that.”

Phil Stott, Group Account Director for Leeds-based agency Brass adds, “We’ve been working together for 3-4 years. At the beginning our remit was to create a new website for Seven Seas. After successfully delivering this project we began working closely with the brand teams to identify the broader role for digital.”

Giving Seven Seas a digital footprint was not the only reason for this change in direction of the marketing. It was to engage with audiences in a very different way. The cod liver oil market was in serious decline, own brands

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were driving down the price of supplements and ultimately the value of that market. At the same time the category had suffered from some negative perceptions.

Phil explains, “One of the first digital campaigns we developed was the ground-breaking, highly successful and award-winning Joint Age Calculator, which gave consumers the chance to discover their ‘joint age’ by sharing information about their joints, diet, exercise routine and supplements in-take.” He adds, “The Joint Age Calculator was a really engaging way to educate consumers about their own joint health, to consider taking supplements, and to establish Seven Seas as experts in health and well-being.” Following its success in the UK, Brass has helped to develop and deploy several versions of the Joint Age Calculator for a number of global territories across the Merck Group.

When Seven Seas launched Health Oils, a product range featuring seven varieties, each designed to help a specific aspect, such as a healthy heart, better immune system, an active mind, more supple joints and so on, the role of digital was to bridge the consumer journey between the TV activity and the products in-store.

Phil explains, “The 30 second TV ad alone was not enough to build purchase intent, so we developed the Be Good Inside Guide, an interactive, digital experience to allow intrigued consumers to discover which products were the best fit for their own health needs.”

Phil says the Guide offered consumers a high level of engagement with the brand and products. “As well as being visually appealing, participants received relevant information, results and recommendations, based on their responses, heightening their knowledge and purchase intent.”

“Until recently digital was not a channel we used to reach our audience, and we wanted to change that.” Paul Ferron - Seven Seas

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Image. The Be Good Inside Guide received industry recognition, winning Gold at the IPM Awards in 2012.

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Image. Participants engaged in fun activities, exercises and questions to discover how healthy they were, and were given useful tips along the way.

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Image. Participants of the Be Good Inside Guide received a personalised email featuring lifestyle advice and product recommendations based on their responses.

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As you would expect, products in the health sector, particularly those with ‘health benefits’, have very tight controls over their marketing. A doctor can recommend a medicine for a specific ailment, but of course a marketing campaign cannot. For example a supplement cannot be said to “Help reduce joint stiffness”, but could be said to, “maintain flexible, supple joints”. This subtle difference is important and a legal requirement.

Paul says, “We could not say the products would help. The Guide was not a diagnostic tool, but a help tool. We could not ask specific ‘medical’ questions. Probably the most we could determine was BMI (Body Mass Index), from height and weight. If memory was the concern, there were games to boost memory alongside the memory product, which would appear as a recommendation.”

Image. The diagram represents the logic chain devised by Brass and shows how they present the right copy and products based on people’s responses.

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He says the regulatory framework meant developing the logic to define the results and product recommendations, along with writing copy was like walking a tightrope, “The project was difficult because it is such a highly regulated space. The wording had to be very carefully crafted. It took all three parties; Seven Seas, Brass and the regulator working closely together to make it happen,” says Paul.

Paul adds, “It was a partnership between us, the various brand managers and Brass to take a traditional well-known British brand and make it more advanced, more digital. We have got it into a very nice space.”

He says the process was, “Very successful. Within 3 months of activity, we had 17,500 consumers, and 74% went through to the personalised report, which is a really high proportion. That is 5-6 minutes of real brand engagement, which is really valuable, and then we had high open rates for the follow-up e-mails,” he says.

Paul says, “It’s a challenging market, but for Seven Seas, we needed to introduce the products to a new audience, and introduce new concepts. We’ve done that successfully and gone from no digital footprint to winning 4 awards for our work in this area.”